Dry adhesion observed in small creatures, such as spiders, insects, and geckos, has many great advantages such as repeatability and strong adhesiveness. In order to mimic these unique performances, fibrillar surface with a mushroom shaped end has drawn lots of attentions because of its advantage in efficiently enhancing adhesion compared with other sphere or simple flat ends. Here, in order to study the effects of contact cap dimension on adhesion strength, patterned surfaces of mushroom-shaped micropillars with differing cap diameters are fabricated based on the conventional photolithography and molding. The normal adhesion strength of these dry adhesives with varying cap diameters is measured with home-built equipment. The strength increases with the rise of cap diameter, and interestingly it becomes strongest when the mushroom caps join together.

Date Published: 26 March 2015
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9429, Bioinspiration, Biomimetics, and Bioreplication 2015, 94291E (26 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2084030

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9429:
Bioinspiration, Biomimetics, and Bioreplication 2015
Akhlesh Lakhtakia; Mato Knez; Raúl J. Martín-Palma, Editor(s)