Epoxy resins are among the best performing adhesives. Recovering the
adhesively joined parts for repetitive use demands innovative bonding
strategies to afford facile debonding while not sacrificing the adhesion
performance. Here, a series of hardeners were prepared by reacting
elemental sulfur with renewable 10-undecenoic acid and further employed
for curing diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A (DGEBA). Dynamically
cross-linked epoxy networks from this solvent- and catalyst-free
procedure exhibit high tensile strength and toughness, which are well
maintained during repetitive thermal processing, assisted by exchanges
of the S–S bonds and β-hydroxyl ester moieties. Moreover, the toughened
epoxy resins show a high adhesion strength of up to 31 MPa for steel
plates. Furthermore, the joined plates can be readily separated by
immersing in a methanol solution of Na2S or hexylamine without any residual resins.
