Self Cleaning Adhesive

UC Berkley published an interesting study about self-cleaning synthetic adhesive, which are inspired by Geckos.

The gecko inspired synthetic adhesive (GSA) self-cleans and recovers
shear adhesion after multiple contacts with a clean dry
surface. Conventional adhesive tapes use a soft polymer adhesive material
which is “sticky”. As is well known, these tapes tend to collect dust
and lose adhesion with repeated use. Mimicking the gecko’s
unique adhesive will make it possible to use synthetic
self-cleaning adhesives in daily life, especially where
conventional tapes can be easily contaminated. The self-cleaning
adhesive is a key enabler for diverse applications such as
medical equipment, climbing robots,apparel, etc. Similar to
the natural gecko, our gecko-inspired synthetic adhesive
consists of millions of stiff polymer micro-fibers which exhibit
mechanically switchable adhesion.

Key features

o first material which is adhesive and cleans itself during use, without water or chemical. o first demonstration with a synthetic adhesive of the unique dry self-cleaning of dirt in gecko, first identified by Hansen and Autumn PNAS 2005. o applications include reusable adhesives for furnishings, office products, apparel, wearable prosthetics. For example, picture frames can be fixed on a wall without nails or sticky glue and later can be moved without leaving holes or sticky residues on the wall, and the gecko adhesive can be reused. o enables future wall climbing robots which can walk through dirt.