Dry-adhesives based on hierarchical poly(methyl methacrylate) electrospun fibers

Abstract

Here, we combine electrospinning and replica-molding to produce hierarchical poly(methyl methacrylate) structures and investigate its adhesion behavior. Normal and shear adhesion of these biomimetic hierarchical structures was measured using nanoindentaton and a custom-built apparatus attached to Zwick tensile testing machine, respectively. Shear adhesion was measured by sliding the samples along the glass slide under a predefined normal preload. Normal adhesion was measured by indenting the surface of the sample with the help of a diamond indenter tip and retracting it back to determine the pull-off force needed to detach it from the sample. These experiments were also conducted on neat PMMA fibers to investigate the effect of hierarchy on the adhesion performance of the samples. Our results show that the shear adhesion strength and pull-off forces recorded for the hierarchical samples are higher than those recorded for neat fibers.