Researchers from Case Western Reserve University, Dayton Air Force Research Laboratory and China have developed a new dry adhesive that bonds in extreme temperatures—a quality that could make the product ideal for space exploration and beyond.
The gecko-inspired adhesive loses no traction in temperatures as cold as liquid nitrogen or as hot as molten silver, and actually gets stickier as heat increases, the researchers report.
The research, which builds on earlier development of a single-sided dry adhesive tape based on vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, is published in the journal Nature Communications. As far as the researchers know, no other dry adhesive is capable of working at such temperature extremes.
Liming Dai, professor of macromolecular science and engineering at Case Western Reserve and an author of the study teamed with Ming Xu, a senior research associate at Case School of Engineering and visiting scholar from Huazhong University of Science and Technology; Feng Du, senior research associate in Case Western Reserve’s Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering; and Sabyasachi Ganguli and Ajit Roy, of the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory.
Vertically aligned carbon nanotubes with tops bundled into nodes replicate the microscopic hairs on the foot of the wallwalking reptile and remain stable from 320 degrees Fahrenheit to 1,832 degrees, the scientists say.