Octopus suckers offer remarkable adhesion performance against nonporous surfaces and have inspired extensive research to develop artificial adhesives. However, most of existing octopus‐inspired adhesives are either passive without an actuation strategy or active but not energy efficient. Here, a novel design of a magnetically actuated, energy‐efficient smart adhesive with rapidly tunable, great switchable, and highly reversible adhesion strength inspired by the elastic energy storage mechanism in octopus suckers is reported. The smart adhesive features two cavities separated by an elastic membrane with the upper cavity filled with magnetic particles while the lower one empty. The deformation of the elastic membrane can be actively controlled by an external magnetic field to change the cavity volume, thus generating a cavity‐pressure‐induced adhesion. Systematically experimental and theoretical studies reveal the fundamental aspects of design and operation of the smart adhesive and give insights into the underlying adhesion mechanisms. Demonstrations of this smart adhesive in transfer printing and manipulation of various surfaces in both dry and wet environments illustrate the potential for deterministic assembly and industrial or robotic manipulation.

Transfer printing based on switchable adhesive that heterogeneously integrates materials is essential to develop novel electronic systems, such as flexible electronics and micro LED displays. Here, we report a robust design of a thermal actuated switchable dry adhesive, which features a stiff sphere embedded in a thermally responsive shape memory polymer (SMP) substrate and encapsulated by an elastomeric membrane. This construct bypasses the unfavorable micro- and nano-fabrication processes and yields an adhesion switchability of over 1000 by combining the peel-rate dependent effect of the elastomeric membrane and the thermal actuation of the sub-surface embedded stiff sphere. Experimental and numerical studies reveal the underlying thermal actuated mechanism and provide insights into the design and operation of the switchable adhesive. Demonstrations of this concept in stamps for transfer printing of fragile objects, such as silicon wafers, silicon chips, and inorganic micro-LED chips, onto challenging non-adhesive surfaces illustrate its potential in heterogeneous material integration applications, such as flexible electronics manufacturing and deterministic assembly.

Wearable electronics have continued to attract the attention of researchers and clinicians due to their great potential in medical applications. During their operations, the undesired heating may cause thermal discomfort or damage to skin. Seeking materials and structures for advanced thermal protection has become an urgent issue. Here, we report a soft, stretchable thermal protective substrate for wearable electronics with remarkable thermal insulating performance, mechanical compliance and stretchability. The thermal protective substrate features a composite design of the widely used polymeric material polydimethylsiloxane with embedded heat absorbing microspheres, consisting of phase change materials encapsulated inside the resin shell. Experimental and numerical studies show that the thermal protective substrate could be subjected to complex deformations over 150% and could reduce the peak skin temperature increase by 82% or higher under optimizations. In vivo demonstration of this concept on the mouse skin illustrates its unusual thermal protection capability for wearable thermal management.