ABSTRACT: Underwater adhesives have drawn much

attention in the areas of industrial and biomedical fields.

However, it is still demanding to construct a tough

underwater gel-based adhesive completely based on chemical

constitution. Herein, a nonswellable and high-strength

underwater adhesive gel is successfully fabricated through

the random copolymerization of acrylic acid, butyl acrylate,

and acrylated adenine in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). The

underwater adhesive behavior is skillfully regulated through

hydrophobic aggregation induced by water?DMSO solvent

exchange. The adhesive gels exhibit an excellent adhesive

behavior for polytetrafluoroethylene, plastics, metals, rubber,

and glasses in air and various aqueous solutions, including deionized water, seawater, and acid and alkali solutions (pH = 3 and

10, respectively). Moreover, the adhesive gels exhibited robust mechanical performance and remarkable nonswellable behavior,

which were particularly important for applications of gel-based adhesives in water. It is anticipated that the strategy of

bioinspired nucleobase-assisted underwater adhesive gel via hydrophobic aggregation induced by solvent exchange would

provide an inspiration for the development of underwater adhesives.