Abstract
The fine hair adhesive system found in nature is capable of reversibly adhering tojust about any surface. This dry adhesive, best demonstrated in the pad of thegecko, makes use of a multilevel conformal structure to greatly increase inelasticsurface contact, enhancing short range interactions and producing significantamounts of attractive forces. Recent work has attempted to reproduce and testthe terminal submicrometre ‘hairs’ of the system. Here we report the first batchfabricated multi-scale conformal system to mimic nature’s dry adhesive. Theapproach makes use of massively parallel MEMS processing technology to produce20–150 µm platforms, supported by single slender pillars, and coated with∼2 µm long, ∼200 nm diameter, organic looking polymer nanorods, or ‘organorods’. To characterize thestructures a new mesoscale nanoindenter adhesion test technique has been developed.Experiments indicate significantly improved adhesion with the multiscale system.Additional processing caused a hydrophilic to hydrophobic transformation of the surfaceand testing indicated further improvement in adhesion.
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