Fabrication of Bio-Inspired Elastomer Nanofiber Arrays with Spatulate Tips using Notching Effect

Author

Kim, Seok ; Sitti, Metin ; Jang, Ji-Hyun ; Thomas, Edwin L.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. Eng., Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA

fYear

2008

fDate

18-21 Aug. 2008

Firstpage

780

Lastpage

782

Abstract

In this paper, a fabrication method for nanoscale elastomer fiber arrays with spatulate tip endings as gecko foot- hairs inspired nanoscale fibrillar dry adhesives is proposed. A master mold is fabricated with silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer using the interference lithography and the notching effect during deep reactive ion etch process. Liquid polymer is poured over the mold in vacuum chamber and cured. Final nanoscale elastomer fiber arrays are released after etching the SOI master mold. Fabricated polyurethane nanofiber arrays with 410 nm fiber diameter and 2 mum height demonstrated macroscale adhesion pressures up to 14.1 N/cm² on a 1 mm diameter silicon flat disk for a preload pressure of 6.7 N/cm².

Keywords

adhesion; bio-inspired materials; biomedical materials; curing; elastomers; moulding; nanobiotechnology; nanolithography; notch strength; silicon; Si; adhesion pressure; bio-inspired material fabrication; curing; deep reactive ion etch process; elastomer nanofiber arrays; gecko foothairs; interference lithography; liquid polymer; molding; nanoscale elastomer fiber arrays; nanoscale fibrillar dry adhesives; notching effect; polyurethane nanofiber arrays; silicon flat disk; silicon-on-insulator wafer; spatulate tip endings; vacuum chamber; Adhesives; Etching; Fabrication; Interference; Lithography; Materials science and technology; Nanobioscience; Optical arrays; Silicon compounds; Silicon on insulator technology;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nanotechnology, 2008. NANO '08. 8th IEEE Conference on

Conference_Location

Arlington, TX

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2103-9

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-2104-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NANO.2008.233

Filename

4617215