Coupled effects of the temperature and the relative humidity on gecko adhesion

Abstract

To explain the inconsistent results of experiments on temperature-dependent gecko adhesion, a theoretical peeling model is established wherein a nano-thin film is adopted to simulate a gecko spatula. The model considers not only the respective effects of temperature and environmental humidity on the peel-off force but also the coupled effect of both factors. Increasing temperature is found to lead to a decreasing peel-off force if the environmental humidity is uncontrolled. However, if the environmental humidity is constant, the peel-off force is insensitive to the temperature and remains almost constant. The synthetic theoretical analysis demonstrates that the seemingly contradictory results of temperature-dependent gecko adhesion experiments are actually consistent under their respective experimental conditions. This inconsistency is mainly due to the environmental humidity, which varies with the changing temperature if it is not artificially controlled. The results cannot only reasonably explain the different experimental results for the effect of temperature on gecko adhesion but can also facilitate the design of temperature-controlled or humidity-controlled adhesion sensors by tuning the environmental humidity or temperature.