TY - GEN
T1 - Dry adhesion of artificial gecko setae fabricated via direct laser lithography
AU - Tricinci, Omar
AU - Eason, Eric V.
AU - Filippeschi, Carlo
AU - Mondini, Alessio
AU - Mazzolai, Barbara
AU - Pugno, Nicola M.
AU - Cutkosky, Mark R.
AU - Greco, Francesco
AU - Mattol, Virgili
PY - 2017/1/1
Y1 - 2017/1/1
N2 - Biomimetics has introduced a new paradigm: by constructing structures with engineered materials and geometries, innovative devices may be fabricated. According to this paradigm, both shape and material properties are equally important to determine functional performance. This idea has been applied also in the field of the microfabrication of smart surfaces, exploiting properties already worked out by nature, like in the case of self-cleaning, drag reduction, structural coloration, and dry adhesion. Regarding dry adhesive properties, geckos represent a good example from which we take inspiration, since they have the extraordinary ability to climb almost every type of surface, even smooth ones, thanks to the hierarchical conformation of the fibrillary setae in their toe pads. Due to this design, they can increase the area of contact with a surface and thus the amount of attractive van der Waals forces. While reproducing with artificial materials the same functional morphology of gecko’s pads is typically not achievable with traditional microfabrication techniques, recently Direct Laser Litography offered new opportunities to fabrication of complex three-dimensional structures in the microscale with nanometric resolution. Using direct laser lithography, we have fabricated artificial gecko setae, reproducing with unprecedented faithfulness the natural morphology in the same dimensional scale. Adhesion force of artificial setae toward different surfaces have been tested in dry condition by means of a dedicated setup and compared with natural ones.
AB - Biomimetics has introduced a new paradigm: by constructing structures with engineered materials and geometries, innovative devices may be fabricated. According to this paradigm, both shape and material properties are equally important to determine functional performance. This idea has been applied also in the field of the microfabrication of smart surfaces, exploiting properties already worked out by nature, like in the case of self-cleaning, drag reduction, structural coloration, and dry adhesion. Regarding dry adhesive properties, geckos represent a good example from which we take inspiration, since they have the extraordinary ability to climb almost every type of surface, even smooth ones, thanks to the hierarchical conformation of the fibrillary setae in their toe pads. Due to this design, they can increase the area of contact with a surface and thus the amount of attractive van der Waals forces. While reproducing with artificial materials the same functional morphology of gecko’s pads is typically not achievable with traditional microfabrication techniques, recently Direct Laser Litography offered new opportunities to fabrication of complex three-dimensional structures in the microscale with nanometric resolution. Using direct laser lithography, we have fabricated artificial gecko setae, reproducing with unprecedented faithfulness the natural morphology in the same dimensional scale. Adhesion force of artificial setae toward different surfaces have been tested in dry condition by means of a dedicated setup and compared with natural ones.
KW - Biomimetics
KW - Direct laser lithography
KW - Dry adhesion
KW - Gecko
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85026747205&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-63537-8_60
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-63537-8_60
M3 - Conference paper
AN - SCOPUS:85026747205
SN - 9783319635361
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 631
EP - 636
BT - Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems - 6th International Conference, Living Machines 2017, Proceedings
PB - Springer Verlag Heidelberg
T2 - 6th International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2017
Y2 - 26 July 2017 through 28 July 2017
ER -