High-performance polymer dry adhesives based on ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer and high-adhesion mechanism.

Abstract

We have proposed a new soft replication fabrication method to fabricate mushroom-shaped dry adhesives with excellent high adhesion, and analyzed its performance and mechanism by taking into consideration the microstructure deformation. The large Young's modulus of ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) copolymer (48.0 MPa) together with rational structure design contribute to easy demolding as well as strong adhesion. The fabricated EVA dry adhesives exhibited strong normal adhesion up to 70 N/cm $^{\mathbf {2}}$, which is one of the best records reported for polymer-based dry adhesives by far. Flexible and transparent EVA dry adhesive films were readily microfabricated through our soft replication method in an inexpensive and high-throughput manner, which enables low-cost adhesive coatings for various substrates and shapes.. In addition, the non-wetting characteristics to repel water and oil makes it promising for robust self-cleaning and reusability. These results may shed new lights for the mass-production of dry adhesives, and to understand the reversible adhesion/detachment mechanism.