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- Creator:
- Wills, Frank, Hirokawa, Brent, Lim, Jade, and Galotra, Rohan
- Description:
- Gecko-like synthetic adhesives (GSAs) are dry adhesives that replicate the function of gecko toepads through their microscopic fibrillar structure. To produce GSA molds, we fabricated Si templates using microsphere lithography. We formed a monolayer of polystyrene microspheres using colloidal self-assembly, then transferred this mask to a Si wafer. Next, we sputtered Au onto the mask and substrate and removed the microspheres using ultrasonication. The resulting Au-patterned Si wafer was exposed to a chemical etch to remove the uncoated material, forming deep pits in the Si surface. This surface structure forms a template for the fabrication of soft polymer molds that can be used to fabricate GSAs.
- Resource Type:
- Poster, Student Research, Presentation, and Abstract
- Campus Tesim:
- Pomona
- Creator:
- Wills, Frank, Galotra, Rohan, Hirokawa, Brent, and Lim, Jade
- Description:
- Gecko-like synthetic adhesives (GSAs) are dry adhesives that replicate the function of gecko toepads through their microscopic fibrillar structure. To produce GSA molds, we fabricated Si templates using microsphere lithography. We formed a monolayer of polystyrene microspheres using colloidal self-assembly, then transferred this mask to a Si wafer. Next, we sputtered Au onto the mask and substrate and removed the microspheres using ultrasonication. The resulting Au-patterned Si wafer was exposed to a chemical etch to remove the uncoated material, forming deep pits in the Si surface. This surface structure forms a template for the fabrication of soft polymer molds that can be used to fabricate GSAs.
- Resource Type:
- Student Research, Poster, Presentation, and Abstract
- Campus Tesim:
- Pomona
- Creator:
- Durling, Madeline, Franco, Julia, Collado, Jan, Lim, Jade, Harris, Jonathan, Pham, Tommy, Ariawan, Natanael, and Kouch, Brandon
- Description:
- Gecko feet exhibit adhesive capabilities due to nanoscale fiber arrays that magnify the Van der Waals forces acting between the hairs and an underlying surface. Synthetic adhesives inspired by this natural gecko material that reproduce its releasable and non-specific adhesion properties are in development but are difficult to fabricate due to the scale and intricacy of the structures required. We fabricated gecko-inspired dry adhesives using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a nontoxic polymer that is easy to mold at the micro level as an uncured liquid. The silicon templates in which the PDMS was cured were manufactured using a microsphere lithography process, which involves the deposition of a dense packing of microspheres which is subsequently etched. This procedure is cost-effective and allows us to gain greater, and more repeatable, control over the resulting sample's characteristics as well as producing reusable molds. We developed an instrumentation platform using the LabVIEW development environment to measure the adhesive forces acting on the resulting samples.
- Resource Type:
- Student Research
- Campus Tesim:
- Pomona