Watching a house gecko scamper across your wall may not immediately make you think of nanostructured adhesives, but for a research group from Simon Fraser University, Canada,
it does.
In fact, the impressive climbing abilities of these little creatures have inspired their recently published article on biomimetic dry adhesives, published in the open access journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.
The article gives an overview of the multiscale structure of gecko foot hairs and how they adhere to surfaces. It further explains how this research is used to develop “synthetic gecko-like dry adhesives which are strong, durable, and self-cleaning” which can then be used in applications such as temporary signage, security, and even climbing robots.
The gecko foot adhesion has been shown to rely on van der Waals forces (Autumn et al., 2002). In order to maximize the interfacial contact area, the gecko foot depends on the multiscale structure of the hierarchical keratin foot hairs, which are located on the toe pad of the gecko and are reported to have non-matting and self-cleaning properties (Hansen and Autumn, 2005). Each hierarchical layer allows the gecko foot to adapt and attach to rough and bumpy surfaces by compressing or conforming to varying levels of surface roughness.
To read the full article, click here.
How is it related to KAUST? There are so many good KAUST based independent research happening in the campus and we are highlighting research from other universities specially prior works in this area exist (http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ronf/Gecko/gecko-biblio.html).
Dear Sadaq, thank you for your comment. This post falls under the category of “miscellaneous” as you are correct – it is not research happening at KAUST. It is more of an interest piece, as many in our community are quite familiar with house geckos and this article talks about geckos and science.
From time to time, The Lens will post an article that may be of interest to our community not because it is our work, but because it relates to science or something related to living at KAUST. For instance, other misc. posts include Dinosaur Fossils Found in Saudi and Top 10 Science Stories of 2013.
That being said, it is not the focus of The Lens and we are always looking for great KAUST research to highlight. In this regard, do you have an idea for a post? If so, please read “How do I submit information to be posted on The Lens?” on our FAQs page. We welcome your suggestions!