Problem
Traditional skin adhesives are either too weak or damaging and disposable. This has left the human skin-device interface largely untapped in the consumer electronics market.
There's a pressing need for a new resuable, reliable, and pain-free skin adhesive.
Approach
Inspired by the incredible adhesive abilities of climbing animals, bio-inspired micropillar arrays make use of thousands of protruding contacts for strong and residue-free adhesion to surfaces.
Yet these adhesives are still too weak to be used in applications beyond the reasearch lab world. By observing these contacts as they attach and detach in real-time, we can explore reasons for their shortcomings and propose new design stratgies.
The Results
The benefit of an array of contacts is not just about the design of the individual contact, but also in their plurality. Their collective detachment behavior is strongly related to their adhesion, with a random sequence showing the strong adhesion of all.
