The paper presents a strategy to achieve tough and functional bonding between synthetic hydrogels and diverse nonporous surfaces, such as glass, silicon, ceramics, titanium, and aluminum. The approach involves chemically anchoring the long-chain polymer networks of tough hydrogels to these surfaces using silanation. This method results in interfacial toughness exceeding 1000 Jm⁻², significantly higher than the toughness of natural interfaces like tendon-bone and cartilage-bone. The authors demonstrate the effectiveness of this strategy through various tests, including peeling tests and finite-element modeling, and show that the tough bonding is optically transparent and electrically conductive. The applications of these robust hydrogel-solid hybrids include superglues, mechanically protective coatings, robotic joints, and conductive hydrogel-metal interfaces. The simplicity and versatility of the method open new avenues for research and practical applications in fields such as biomedicine, robotics, and electronics.The paper presents a strategy to achieve tough and functional bonding between synthetic hydrogels and diverse nonporous surfaces, such as glass, silicon, ceramics, titanium, and aluminum. The approach involves chemically anchoring the long-chain polymer networks of tough hydrogels to these surfaces using silanation. This method results in interfacial toughness exceeding 1000 Jm⁻², significantly higher than the toughness of natural interfaces like tendon-bone and cartilage-bone. The authors demonstrate the effectiveness of this strategy through various tests, including peeling tests and finite-element modeling, and show that the tough bonding is optically transparent and electrically conductive. The applications of these robust hydrogel-solid hybrids include superglues, mechanically protective coatings, robotic joints, and conductive hydrogel-metal interfaces. The simplicity and versatility of the method open new avenues for research and practical applications in fields such as biomedicine, robotics, and electronics.