Sensing-triggered stiffness-tunable smart adhesives

Artificial dry adhesives have exhibited great potential in the field of robotics. However, there is still a wide gap between bioinspired adhesives and living tissues, especially regarding the surface adaptability and switching ability of attachment/detachment. Here, we propose a sensing-triggered stiffness-tunable smart adhesive material, combining the functions of muscle tissues and sensing nerves rather than traditional biomimetic adhesive strategy that only focuses on structural geometry. Authorized by real-time perception of the interface contact state, conformal contact, shape locking, and active releasing are achieved by adjusting the stiffness based on the magnetorheological effect. Because of the fast switching of the magnetic field, a millisecond-level attachment/detachment response is successfully achieved, breaking the bottleneck of adhesive materials for high-speed manipulation. The innovative design can be applied to any toe's surface structure, opening up a previously unknown avenue for the development of adhesive materials.

Magnetically Tunable Adhesion of Magnetoactive Elastomers' Surface Covered with Two-Level Newt-Inspired Microstructures

As one of the new intelligent materials, controllable bionic adhesive materials have great application prospects in many fields, such as wearable electronic devices, wall climbing robot systems, and biomedical engineering. Inspired by the microstructure of the newt pad's surface, this paper reports a bionic adhesive surface material with controllable adhesion on dry, wet acrylic, and iron sheet surfaces. The material is prepared by mixing the PDMS matrix with micron carbonyl iron powders (CIPs) and then pouring the mixture into a female mold prepared by Photo-curing 3D Printing for curing. As the mold interior is designed with a two-level microstructure array, the material's surface not only coated a regular hexagonal column array with a side length of 250 μm and a height of 100 μm but also covered seven dome structures with a diameter of 70 μm on each column. In what follows, the adhesion force of the proposed materials contacted three different surfaces are tested with/without magnetic fields. The experimental results show that the MAEs covered with two-level bionic structures(2L-MAE) reported in this paper exhibit a stronger initial adhesion in the three types of surfaces compared to the normal one. Besides, we also found that the magnetic field will noticeably affect their adhesion performance. Generally, the 2L-MAE's adhesion will increase with the external magnetic field. When the contact surface is an iron sheet, the material adhesion will be reduced by the magnetic field.

Reconfigurable Surface Micropatterns Based on the Magnetic Field-Induced Shape Memory Effect in Magnetoactive Elastomers

A surface relief grating with a period of 30 µm is embossed onto the surface of magnetoactive elastomer (MAE) samples in the presence of a moderate magnetic field of about 180 mT. The grating, which is represented as a set of parallel stripes with two different amplitude reflectivity coefficients, is detected via diffraction of a laser beam in the reflection configuration. Due to the magnetic-field-induced plasticity effect, the grating persists on the MAE surface for at least 90 h if the magnetic field remains present. When the magnetic field is removed, the diffraction efficiency vanishes in a few minutes. The described effect is much more pronounced in MAE samples with larger content of iron filler (80 wt%) than in the samples with lower content of iron filler (70 wt%). A simple theoretical model is proposed to describe the observed dependence of the diffraction efficiency on the applied magnetic field. Possible applications of MAEs as magnetically reconfigurable diffractive optical elements are discussed. It is proposed that the described experimental method can be used as a convenient tool for investigations of the dynamics of magnetically induced plasticity of MAEs on the micrometer scale.

Switchable adhesion of soft composites induced by a magnetic field

Switchable adhesives have the potential to improve the manufacturing and recycling of parts, and to enable new modes of motility for soft robots. Here, we demonstrate magnetically-switchable adhesion of a two-phase composite to non-magnetic objects. The composite's continuous phase is a silicone elastomer, and the dispersed phase is a magneto-rheological fluid. The composite is simple to prepare, and to mold into different shapes. When a magnetic field is applied, the magneto-rheological fluid develops a yield stress, which dramatically enhances the composite's adhesive properties. We demonstrate up to a nine-fold increase of the pull-off force of non-magnetic objects in the presence of a 250 mT field.

Effects of Digit Orientation on Gecko Adhesive Force Capacity: Synthetic and Behavioral Studies

In this study we developed an analytical relationship between adhesive digit orientation and adhesive force capacity to describe the tendencies of climbing organisms that use adhesion for climbing to align their toes in the direction of loading, maximizing adhesive force capacity. We fabricated a multi-component adhesive device with multiple contact surfaces, or digits, to act as a model system mimicking the angular motion of a foot and found the synthetic experiments agree with the developed analytical relationship. In turn, we find that observations of gekkonid lizards climbing on vertical substrates correlate well with our analytical relationship; a reduction in toe spacing is seen on the forelimbs when the animals are facing up. Interestingly, the toes on the hindlimbs tend to have an increase in spacing, possibly a mechanism for stabilization rather than load-bearing.

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.

Understanding Surface Adhesion in Nature: A Peeling Model

Nature often exhibits various interesting and unique adhesive surfaces. The attempt to understand the natural adhesion phenomena can continuously guide the design of artificial adhesive surfaces by proposing simplified models of surface adhesion. Among those models, a peeling model can often effectively reflect the adhesive property between two surfaces during their attachment and detachment processes. In the context, this review summarizes the recent advances about the peeling model in understanding unique adhesive properties on natural and artificial surfaces. It mainly includes four parts: a brief introduction to natural surface adhesion, the theoretical basis and progress of the peeling model, application of the peeling model, and finally, conclusions. It is believed that this review is helpful to various fields, such as surface engineering, biomedicine, microelectronics, and so on.

Effect of friction on the peeling test at zero-degrees

We describe the peeling of an elastomeric strip adhering to a glass plate through van der Waals interactions in the limit of a zero peeling angle. In contrast to classical studies that predict a saturation of the pulling force, in this lap test configuration the force continuously increases, while a sliding front propagates along the tape. The strip eventually detaches from the substrate when the front reaches its end. Although the evolution of the force is reminiscent of recent studies involving a compliant adhesive coupled with a rigid backing, the progression of a front is in contradiction with such a mechanism. To interpret this behavior, we estimate the local shear stress at the interface by monitoring the deformation of the strip. Our results are consistent with a nearly constant friction stress in the sliding zone in agreement with other experimental observations where adhesion and friction are observed.