Editorial for the special issue for the 6th Asian Conference on Adhesion

Since adhesive bonding becomes a popular and important technique for industry, much research has been conducted by many researchers even in the Asian region. The Asian Conference on Adhesion was established to meet the demand for communication, corroboration, and exchanging information among researchers on adhesion and adhesion related phenomena in the Asian region in 2005.

The science committee of this conference consists of members from adhesion societies of Asian countries including China, Korea, and Japan. The first Asian conference took place in Jeju, South Korea, 2005, the second in Beijing, China, 2007, the third in Hamamatsu, Japan, 2009, the fourth in Pusan, South Korea, 2011, and the fifth in Beijing, China, 2013.

This Special Issue of Applied Adhesion Science was conceived with the aim of offering to the interested readers an overview of the present research trends presented in the 6th Asian Conference on Adhesion, which took place at Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan in June 2016. It gathers a collection of seven selected papers, written for this occasion by members of academia who joined the conference and made presentations.

Asia is a region whose economy has been increasing quickly, and the industrial power is expanding over the world. The success is supported by the steady efforts of many researchers. In the Asian region, much research on adhesion has intensively been carried out. However, the results seem being not known worldwide. Therefore, this special issue also plays a role in introducing research on adhesion in the Asian region to the world.

We really appreciate the efforts by the authors who contributed to the special issue because we did not have a plenty of time to prepare, review, and edit the special issue. Everything has been done within a short period.

We also thank the reviewers for their precious critical evaluations of the manuscripts.

Finally, we greatly appreciate the kindness of Prof. Silvio de Barros, Editor-in-Chief of Applied Adhesion Science. He has made this special issue possible, and given his advice and guidance during the work.