Fibrillar Adhesives Research Articles

Optimal Load Sharing in Bioinspired Fibrillar Adhesives: Asymptotic Solution

Abstract We propose here an asymptotic solution defining the optimal compliance distribution for a fibrillar adhesive to obtain maximum theoretical strength. This condition corresponds to that of equal load sharing (ELS) among fibrils, i.e., all the fibrils are carrying the same load at detachment; hence, they all detach simultaneously. We model the array of fibrils as a continuum of linear elastic material that cannot laterally transmit load (analogous to a Winkler soil). Ultimately, we obtain the continuum distribution of fibril's compliance in the closed-form solution and compare it with previously obtained data for a discrete model for fibrillar adhesives. The results show improving accuracy for an incremental number of fibrils and smaller center-to-center spacing. Surprisingly, the approximation introduced by the asymptotic model shows reduced sensitivity of the adhesive strength with respect to misalignment and improved adhesive strength for large misalignment angles.

Theoretical modelling of soft robotic gripper with bioinspired fibrillar adhesives

Soft robotic grippers have gained much attention in recent years owing to their advantages of easy fabrication, flexibility, and adaptability. Inspired by the adhesion capability of gecko’s toe and tree frogs in nature, this study presents a soft robotic gripper made of fiber-reinforced actuator and bioinspired fibrillar adhesives for grasping circular objects with enhanced grasping capability. Theoretical models of the designed gripper are established for characterizing bending angle, blocking force, friction force, and weight-carrying capability. The contribution of this article is the theoretical derivation of an explicit approximation formula for calculating bending angle and grasping force of designed soft gripper under different inflation pressures. Correctness and robustness of the derived formula for bending angle approximation was verified by established three-dimensional finite element model of the designed actuator. With the bioinspired fibrillar adhesives, the friction force between gripper and grasped objects is transformed to load-controlled and area-dependent friction force, which is much greater than that of the traditional design. A two-fingered soft gripper with the newly designed fiber-reinforced actuator is analyzed to verify the derived mathematical model. These models will be beneficial for robotic design/fabrication/control.

Role of structural stiffness on the loading capacity of fibrillar adhesive composite

Bio-inspired fibrillar adhesives have been extensively studied for applications in a wide range of fields, including transfer printing, intelligent robotics, and space technology. Herein, by considering a generalized adhesive composite composed of a fibrillar adhesive layer and a backing layer in contact with a smooth substrate, we developed a theoretical approach based on the peel zone model to predict its loading and failure behavior. The effects of mechanical and geometrical properties were discussed and verified with finite element method simulations. We found that the loading capacity is dominated by the effective adhesion strength and the stretched area of the adhesive micropillars (peel zone) with a simple linear relationship. Specifically, the peel zone is determined by the ratio of the bending stiffness of the backing layer to the tensile stiffness of the micropillar structures. Moreover, a design map for desired loading capacity with optimized structural stiffness is proposed. These findings present a comprehensive understanding of the loading mechanism of fibrillar adhesives and provide new insights into the rational design of reversible strong adhesion for related technologies.

Bioinspired fibrillar adhesives with shape-controlled off-center caps for switchable and directional adhesion

Most natural fibrillar adhesive structures feature spatula-shaped caps as a common adhesive element. The spatula-shaped tips endow adhesive fiber arrays with on demand adhesion, allowing them to maximize adhesion in a given direction and facilitate effortless detachment. Replication of off-center spatula ends synthetically, a key contributor to directional adhesion, remains a fabrication challenge. In this work, a method to feature synthetic microfiber adhesives with off-center caps is proposed. This new method decouples the shape and placement dependency between the cap and the stem, providing endless possibilities in positioning of the tip with respect to the stem and the two-dimensional shape and the material of both the cap and the stem. Experiments of directional adhesion were carried out to demonstrate switchable adhesion relevant for pick & place type applications, and the ability to generate high friction and easy removal. Fibers with off-center caps were shown to promote easy detachment after strong adhesion in both straight and bent stalks. Straight fibers with off-center caps showed 3-to-5-fold reduction in adhesion when pulled diagonally instead of vertically from the adhering surface. Bent fibers on the other hand provided up to 3 times more maximum shear than adhesion, when fibers are dragged laterally against the cap overhang. These results show the versatility and the potential of the proposed fabrication method in designing application specific directional and switchable adhesives.

Liquid-Superrepellent Bioinspired Fibrillar Adhesives.

Bioinspired elastomeric fibrillar surfaces have significant potential as reversible dry adhesives, but their adhesion performance is sensitive to the presence of liquids at the contact interface. Like their models in nature, many artificial mimics can effectively repel water, but fail when low-surface-tension liquids are introduced at the contact interface. A bioinspired fibrillar adhesive surface that is liquid-superrepellent even toward ultralow-surface-tension liquids while retaining its adhesive properties is proposed herein. This surface combines the effective adhesion principle of mushroom-shaped fibrillar arrays with liquid repellency based on double re-entrant fibril tip geometry. The adhesion performance of the proposed microfibril structures is retained even when low-surface-tension liquids are added to the contact interface. The extreme liquid repellency enables real-world applications of fibrillar adhesives for surfaces covered with water, oil, and other liquids. Moreover, fully elastomeric liquid-superrepellent surfaces are mechanically not brittle, highly robust against physical contact, and highly deformable and stretchable, which can increase the real-world uses of such antiwetting surfaces.

Statistical properties of defect-dependent detachment strength in bioinspired dry adhesives.

Dry adhesives using surface microstructures inspired by climbing animals have been recognized for their potentially novel capabilities, with relevance to a range of applications including pick-and-place handling. Past work has suggested that performance may be strongly dependent on variability in the critical defect size among fibrillar sub-contacts. However, it has not been directly verified that the resulting adhesive strength distribution is well described by the statistical theory of fracture used. Using in situ contact visualization, we characterize adhesive strength on a fibril-by-fibril basis for a synthetic fibrillar adhesive. Two distinct detachment mechanisms are observed. The fundamental, design-dependent mechanism involves defect propagation from within the contact. The secondary mechanism involves defect propagation from fabrication imperfections at the perimeter. The existence of two defect populations complicates characterization of the statistical properties. This is addressed by using the mean order ranking method to isolate the fundamental mechanism. The statistical properties obtained are subsequently used within a bimodal framework, allowing description of the secondary mechanism. Implications for performance are discussed, including the improvement of strength associated with elimination of fabrication imperfections. This statistical analysis of defect-dependent detachment represents a more complete approach to the characterization of fibrillar adhesives, offering new insight for design and fabrication.

Strong Wet and Dry Adhesion by Cupped Microstructures.

Recent advances in bio-inspired microfibrillar adhesives have resulted in technologies that allow reliable attachment to a variety of surfaces. Because capillary and van der Waals forces are considerably weakened underwater, fibrillar adhesives are however far less effective in wet environments. Although various strategies have been proposed to achieve strong reversible underwater adhesion, strong adhesives that work both in air and underwater without additional surface treatments have yet to be developed. In this study, we report a novel design—cupped microstructures (CM)—that generates strong controllable adhesion in air and underwater. We measured the adhesive performance of cupped polyurethane microstructures with three different cup angles (15, 30, and 45°) and the same cup diameter of 100 μm in dry and wet conditions in comparison to standard mushroom-shaped microstructures (MSMs) of the same dimensions. In air, 15°CM performed comparably to the flat MSM of the same size with an adhesion strength (force per real contact area) of up to 1.3 MPa, but underwater, 15°CM achieved 20 times stronger adhesion than MSM (∼1 MPa versus ∼0.05 MPa). Furthermore, the cupped microstructures exhibit self-sealing properties, whereby stronger pulls lead to longer stable attachment and much higher adhesion through the formation of a better seal.

Tailored polyurethane acrylate blend for large-scale and high-performance micropatterned dry adhesives

Continuous roll-to-roll fabrication is essential for transferring the idea of bio-inspired, fibrillar dry adhesives into large-scale, synthetic, high-performance adhesive tapes. Toward this aim, we investigated process parameters that allow us to control the morphology and the resulting adhesion of mushroom-shaped micropatterned surfaces. Flexible silicone templates enabled the replication process of the polyurethane acrylate pre-polymer involving UV-light-induced cross-linking. For this paper, we particularly tailored the polyurethane acrylate pre-polymer by adding chemical components to tune UV curing kinetics and to reduce oxygen inhibition of radicals. We found that higher intensities of the UV light and faster reaction kinetics improved the quality of the microstructures, i.e., a larger cap diameter of the mushroom tips was achieved. The polymer blend U6E4 exhibited the fastest curing kinetics, which resulted in a micromorphology similar to that of the Ni-shim master structures. Best adhesion results were obtained for adhesive tapes made from U6E4 with 116 kPa pull-off stress, 1.4 N cm−1 peel strength and 71 kPa shear strength. In addition, repeated attachment–detachment tests over 100,000 cycles demonstrated strong robustness and reusability.

A Physical Model Approach to Gecko Adhesion Opportunity and Constraint: How Rough Could It Be?

It has been nearly 20 years since Autumn and colleagues established the central role of van der Waals intermolecular forces in how geckos stick. Much has been discovered about the structure and function of fibrillar adhesives in geckos and other taxa, and substantial success has been achieved in translating natural models into bioinspired synthetic adhesives. Nevertheless, synthetics still cannot match the multidimensional performance observed in the natural gecko system that is simultaneously robust to dirt and water, resilient over thousands of cycles, and purportedly competent on surfaces that are rough at drastically different length scales. Apparent insensitivity of adhesion to variability in roughness is particularly interesting from both a theoretical and applied perspective. Progress on understanding the extent to which and the basis of how the gecko adhesive system is robust to variation in roughness is impeded by the complexity of quantifying roughness of natural surfaces and a dearth of data on free-ranging gecko substrate use. Here we review the main challenges in characterizing rough surfaces as they relate to collecting relevant estimates of variation in gecko adhesive performance across different substrates in their natural habitats. In response to these challenges, we propose a practical protocol (borrowing from thermal biophysical ecological methods) that will enable researchers to design detailed studies of structure-function relationships of the gecko fibrillar system. Employing such an approach will help provide specific hypotheses about how adhesive pad structure translates into a capacity for robust gecko adhesion across large variation in substrate roughness. Preliminary data we present on this approach suggest its promise in advancing the study of how geckos deal with roughness variation. We argue and outline how such data can help advance development of design parameters to improve bioinspired adhesives based on the gecko fibrillar system.

Going Out on a Limb: How Investigation of the Anoline Adhesive System Can Enhance Our Understanding of Fibrillar Adhesion.

The remarkable ability of geckos to adhere to a wide-variety of surfaces has served as an inspiration for hundreds of studies spanning the disciplines of biomechanics, functional morphology, ecology, evolution, materials science, chemistry, and physics. The multifunctional properties (e.g., self-cleaning, controlled releasability, reversibility) and adhesive performance of the gekkotan adhesive system have motivated researchers to design and fabricate gecko-inspired synthetic adhesives of various materials and properties. However, many challenges remain in our attempts to replicate the properties and performance of this complex, hierarchical fibrillar adhesive system, stemming from fundamental, but unanswered, questions about how fibrillar adhesion operates. Such questions involve the role of fibril morphology in adhesive performance and how the gekkotan adhesive apparatus is utilized in nature. Similar fibrillar adhesive systems have, however, evolved independently in two other lineages of lizards (anoles and skinks) and potentially provide alternate avenues for addressing these fundamental questions. Anoles are the most promising group because they have been the subject of intensive ecological and evolutionary study for several decades, are highly speciose, and indeed are advocated as squamate model organisms. Surprisingly, however, comparatively little is known about the morphology, performance, and properties of their convergently-evolved adhesive arrays. Although many researchers consider the performance of the adhesive system of Anolis lizards to be less accomplished than its gekkotan counterpart, we argue here that Anolis lizards are prime candidates for exploring the fundamentals of fibrillar adhesion. Studying the less complex morphology of the anoline adhesive system has the potential to enhance our understanding of fibril morphology and its relationship to the multifunctional performance of fibrillar adhesive systems. Furthermore, the abundance of existing data on the ecology and evolution of anoles provides an excellent framework for testing hypotheses about the influence of habitat microstructure on the performance, behavior, and evolution of lizards with subdigital adhesive pads.

Cluster of the Kendall-type adhesive microcontacts as a simple model for load sharing in bioinspired fibrillar adhesives

The problem of multiple adhesive contact is considered for an elastic substrate modeled as a transversely isotropic elastic half-space. It is assumed that a large number of the Kendall-type microcontacts are formed between the substrate and circular rigid (i.e., nondeformable) and frictionless micropads, which are interconnected between themselves, thereby establishing a load sharing. The effect of microcontacts interaction is accounted for in the formulation of the detachment criterion for each individual microcontact. A number of different asymptotic models are presented for the case of dilute clusters of microcontacts with their accuracy tested against a special case of two-spot contact, for which an analytical solution is available. The pull-off force has been estimated and the effects of the array size and the microcontact spacing are studied. It is shown that the flexibility of the micropads fixation, which is similar to that observed in mushroom-shaped fibrils, significantly increases the pull-off force. The novelty of the presented approach is its ability to separate different effects in the multi-scale contact problem, which allows one to distinguish between different mathematical models developed for bioinspired fibrillar adhesives.

Benefit of Backing‐Layer Compliance in Fibrillar Adhesive Patches—Resistance to Peel Propagation in the Presence of Interfacial Misalignment

AbstractInvestigations of backing‐layer effects in bioinspired fibrillar adhesives have shown that increased compliance is detrimental to the strength of fibril arrays under normal loading due to an increase in severity of a circumferential load concentration. In this work, the impact of misalignment on the performance of fibrillar adhesive patches contacting smooth flat surfaces is examined, demonstrating that the conditions for circumferential detachment are extremely limited. For an array of fibrils on a backing layer of varying thickness, normal adhesion tests are performed against a flat surface that maintains a fixed angle of misalignment with respect to the adhesive surface. In the aligned state the detachment is circumferential and the detachment force is highest for the thinnest, least compliant backing layer. However, for misalignment angles on the order of just 0.1°, peel‐like detachments are observed. The thickest backing layer, being 210% more compliant than the thinnest, yields a 43% increase in the adhesive strength at a misalignment angle of 0.4°. This suggests that out‐with conditions of precise alignment, backing‐layer compliance is beneficial to strength under normal loading. A mechanical model is presented, revealing the mechanism behind enhanced resistance to peel propagation is deformation of the backing layer at the detachment front which reduces differential stretching of fibrils.

Soiled adhesive pads shear clean by slipping: a robust self-cleaning mechanism in climbing beetles.

Animals using adhesive pads to climb smooth surfaces face the problem of keeping their pads clean and functional. Here, a self-cleaning mechanism is proposed whereby soiled feet would slip on the surface due to a lack of adhesion but shed particles in return. Our study offers an in situ quantification of self-cleaning performance in fibrillar adhesives, using the dock beetle as a model organism. After beetles soiled their pads by stepping into patches of spherical beads, we found that their gait was significantly affected. Specifically, soiled pads slipped 10 times further than clean pads, with more particles deposited for longer slips. Like previous studies, we found that particle size affected cleaning performance. Large (45 μm) beads were removed most effectively, followed by medium (10 μm) and small (1 μm). Consistent with our results from climbing beetles, force measurements on freshly severed legs revealed larger detachment forces of medium particles from adhesive pads compared to a flat surface, possibly due to interlocking between fibres. By contrast, dock leaves showed an overall larger affinity to the beads and thus reduced the need for cleaning. Self-cleaning through slippage provides a mechanism robust to particle size and may inspire solutions for artificial adhesives.

Sticking to rough surfaces using functionally graded bio-inspired microfibres.

Synthetic fibrillar adhesives inspired by nature, most commonly by the gecko lizard, have been shown to strongly and repeatedly attach to smooth surfaces. These adhesives, mostly of monolithic construction, perform on par with their natural analogues on smooth surfaces but exhibit far inferior adhesive performance on rough surfaces. In this paper, we report on the adhesive performance of functionally graded microfibrillar adhesives based on a microfibre with a divergent end and a thin soft distal layer on rough surfaces. Monolithic and functionally graded fibre arrays were fabricated from polyurethanes and their adhesive performance on surfaces of varying roughness were quantified from force–distance data obtained using a custom adhesion measurement system. Average pull-off stress declined significantly with increasing roughness for the monolithic fibre array, dropping from 77 kPa on the smoothest (54 nm RMS roughness) to 19 kPa on the roughest (408 nm RMS roughness) testing surface. In comparison, pull-off stresses of 81 kPa and 63 kPa were obtained on the same respective smooth and rough surfaces with a functionally graded fibre array, which represents a more than threefold increase in adhesion to the roughest adhering surface. These results show that functionally graded fibrillar adhesives perform similar on all the testing surfaces unlike monolithic arrays and show potential as repeatable and reusable rough surface adhesives.

A Review of the State of Dry Adhesives: Biomimetic Structures and the Alternative Designs They Inspire

Robust and inexpensive dry adhesives would have a multitude of potential applications, but replicating the impressive adhesive organs of many small animals has proved challenging. A substantial body of work has been produced in recent years which has illuminated the many mechanical processes influencing a dry adhesive interface. The especially potent footpads of the tokay gecko have inspired researchers to develop and examine an impressive and diverse collection of artificial fibrillar dry adhesives, though study of tree frogs and insects demonstrate that successful adhesive designs come in many forms. This review discusses the current theoretical understanding of dry adhesive mechanics, including the observations from biological systems and the lessons learned by recent attempts to mimic them. Attention is drawn in particular to the growing contingent of work exploring ideas which are complimentary to or an alternative for fibrillar designs. The fundamentals of compliance control form a basis for dry adhesives made of composite and “smart,” stimuli-responsive materials including shape memory polymers. An overview of fabrication and test techniques, with a sampling of performance results, is provided.

Composite Pillars with a Tunable Interface for Adhesion to Rough Substrates.

The benefits of synthetic fibrillar dry adhesives for temporary and reversible attachment to hard objects with smooth surfaces have been successfully demonstrated in previous studies. However, surface roughness induces a dramatic reduction in pull-off stresses and necessarily requires revised design concepts. Toward this aim, we introduce cylindrical two-phase single pillars, which are composed of a mechanically stiff stalk and a soft tip layer. Adhesion to smooth and rough substrates is shown to exceed that of conventional pillar structures. The adhesion characteristics can be tuned by varying the thickness of the soft tip layer, the ratio of the Young’s moduli and the curvature of the interface between the two phases. For rough substrates, adhesion values similar to those obtained on smooth substrates were achieved. Our concept of composite pillars overcomes current practical limitations caused by surface roughness and opens up fields of application where roughness is omnipresent.

Thermally Active Liquid Crystal Network Gripper Mimicking the Self-Peeling of Gecko Toe Pads.

Self-peeling of gecko toes is mimicked by integration of film-terminated fibrillar adhesives to hybrid nematic liquid crystal network (LCN) cantilevers. A soft gripper is developed based on the gecko-inspired attachment/detachment mechanism. Performance of the fabricated gripper for transportation of thin delicate objects is evaluated by the optimum mechanical strength of the LCN and the maximum size of the adhesive patch.

Measurement of the strength and range of adhesion using atomic force microscopy

Adhesion of nanoscale contacts is important in many applications, including microelectromechanical systems, fibrillar adhesives, and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Here, we quantify the properties of the adhesive traction–separation relation between ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) AFM tips and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) surfaces using a novel AFM-based method that combines pull-off force measurements and characterization of the 3D geometry of the AFM tip. Three AFM tips with different nanoscale geometries were characterized and used to perform pull-off force measurements. Using the pull-off force data, the measured 3D tip geometries, and an assumed form of the traction–separation relation, specifically the Dugdale or 3-9 Lennard-Jones relations, the range, strength, and work of adhesion of the UNCD–PMMA contact were determined. The assumptions in the analyses were validated via finite element modeling. Both forms of the traction–separation laws result in a work of adhesion of approximately 50 mJ/m2 and the peak adhesive stress in the Lennard Jones relation is found to be about 50% higher than that obtained for the Dugdale law.

Fibrillar Elastomeric Micropatterns Create Tunable Adhesion Even to Rough Surfaces

Biologically inspired, fibrillar dry adhesives continue to attract much attention as they are instrumental for emerging applications and technologies. To date, the adhesion of micropatterned gecko‐inspired surfaces has predominantly been tested on stiff, smooth substrates. However, all natural and almost all artificial surfaces have roughnesses on one or more different length scales. In the present approach, micropillar‐patterned PDMS surfaces with superior adhesion to glass substrates with different roughnesses are designed and analyzed. The results reveal for the first time adhesive and nonadhesive states depending on the micropillar geometry relative to the surface roughness profile. The data obtained further demonstrate that, in the adhesive regime, fibrillar gecko‐inspired adhesive structures can be used with advantage on rough surfaces; this finding may open up new applications in the fields of robotics, biomedicine, and space exploration.

Load sharing in bioinspired fibrillar adhesives with backing layer interactions and interfacial misalignment

Bio-inspired fibrillar adhesives rely on the utilization of short-range intermolecular forces harnessed by intimate contact at fibril tips. The combined adhesive strength of multiple fibrils can only be utilized if equal load sharing (ELS) is obtained at detachment. Previous investigations have highlighted that mechanical coupling of fibrils through a compliant backing layer gives rise to load concentration and the nucleation and propagation of interfacial flaws. However, misalignment of the adhesive and contacting surface has not been considered in theoretical treatments of load sharing with backing layer interactions. Alignment imperfections are difficult to avoid for a flat-on-flat interfacial configuration. In this work we demonstrate that interfacial misalignment can significantly alter load sharing and the kinematics of detachment in a model adhesive system. Load sharing regimes dominated by backing layer interactions and misalignment are revealed, the transition between which is controlled by the misalignment angle, fibril separation, and fibril compliance. In the regime dominated by misalignment, backing layer deformation can counteract misalignment giving rise to improved load sharing when compared to an identical fibrillar array with a rigid backing layer. This result challenges the conventional belief that stiffer (and thinner) backing layers consistently reduce load concentration among fibrils. Finally, we obtain analytically the fibril compliance distribution required to harness backing layer interactions to obtain ELS. Through fibril compliance optimization, ELS can be obtained even with misalignment. However, since misalignment is typically not deterministic, it is of greater practical significance that the array optimized for perfect alignment exhibits load sharing superior to that of a homogeneous array subject to misalignment. These results inform the design of fibrillar arrays with graded compliance capable of exhibiting improved load sharing over large areas.