Robust and Elevated Adhesion and Anisotropic Friction in a Bioinspired Bridged Micropillar Array.

Abstract

Bioinspired structured adhesives have promising applications in the fields of robotics, electronics, medical engineering, and so forth. The strong adhesion and friction as well as the durability of bioinspired hierarchical fibrillar adhesives are essential for their applications, which require fine submicrometer structures to stay stable during repeated use. Here, we develop a bioinspired bridged micropillars array (BP), which realizes a 2.18-fold adhesion and a 2.02-fold friction as compared to that of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) original micropillar arrays. The aligned bridges offer BP strong anisotropic friction. The adhesion and friction of BP can be finely regulated by changing the modulus of the bridges. Moreover, BP shows strong adaptability to surface curvature (ranging from 0 to 800 m-1), excellent durability over 500 repeating cycles of attachment/detachment, and self-cleaning ability. This study presents a novel approach for designing robust structured adhesives with strong and anisotropic friction, which may find applications in areas such as climbing robots and cargo transportation.