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Biologically inspired polymer microfibers with spatulate tips as repeatable fibrillar adhesives

2006; American Institute of Physics; Volume: 89; Issue: 26 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1063/1.2424442

1520-8842

Seok Kim, Metin Sitti,

Polymer Surface Interaction Studies

Being inspired by gecko foot hairs, microfibers with flat spatulate tips are proposed as repeatable adhesives. They are fabricated by molding a master template fabricated using deep reactive ion etching and the notching effect. Fabricated polyurethane fiber arrays with 4.5μm fiber and 9μm tip diameter demonstrated macroscale adhesion pressures up to 18N∕cm2 and overall work of adhesion up to 11J∕m2 on a 6mm diameter glass hemisphere for a preload pressure of 12N∕cm2. These results show around four times higher adhesion and five times higher overall work of adhesion as compared to the flat polyurethane surface.