Contact Self-Cleaning of Synthetic Gecko Adhesive from Polymer Microfibers

Natural gecko toes covered by nanomicro structures can repeatedly adhere to surfaces without collecting dirt. Inspired by geckos, we fabricated a high-aspect-ratio fibrillar adhesive from a stiff polymer and demonstrated self-cleaning of the adhesive during contact with a surface. In contrast to a conventional pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA), the contaminated synthetic fibrillar adhesive recovered about 33% of the shear adhesion of clean samples after multiple contacts with a clean, dry surface.