Fibrillar adhesives with unprecedented adhesion strength, switchability and scalability

Abstract

Bio-inspired fibrillar adhesives have received worldwide attention but their potentials have been limited by a trade-off between adhesion strength and adhesion switchability, and a size scale effect that restricts the fibrils to micro/nanoscales. Here, we report a class of adhesive fibrils that achieve unprecedented adhesion strength (∼2 MPa), switchability (∼2000), and scalability (up to millimeter-scale at the single fibril level), by leveraging the rubber-to-glass (R2G) transition in shape memory polymers (SMPs). Moreover, R2G SMP fibrillar adhesive arrays exhibit a switchability of >1000 (with the aid of controlled buckling) and an adhesion efficiency of 57.8%, with apparent contact area scalable to 1000 mm2, outperforming existing fibrillar adhesives. We further demonstrate that the SMP fibrillar adhesives can be used as soft grippers and reusable superglue devices that are capable of holding and releasing heavy objects more than 2000 times of their own weight. These findings represent significant advances in smart fibrillar adhesives for numerous applications, especially those involving high-payload scenarios.