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Photo-controlled bio-mimicking dry adhesive

Date created
2016-01-29
Authors/Contributors
Abstract
The goal of this work is to develop a photo-switchable dry adhesive. Spiropyran doped PDMS polymer was moulded into biomimetic mushroom-shaped fibrillar adhesive microstructures characterized using a variety of measurement techniques and compared with a flat control surface made of the same material. Using UV light to generate of charged merocyanine molecules within ‘mushroom’-shaped micro-structured PDMS films enhanced the adhesion of the film to glass surfaces. The strength of the dry adhesive property can be lowered back to the original state using visible light. Quick and efficient switching in the polymer was observed. Integrating this molecule increased normal adhesion of unstructured samples by a factor of ~4 when polymer was in the neutral spiropyran form and ~5 for the merocyanine zwitterionic isomer, which demonstrated that control over the adhesion strength was possible. Surface charge and contact angle measurements further confirmed the proper functionality of the switch inside the PDMS polymer.
Document
Identifier
etd9433
Copyright statement
Copyright is held by the author.
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This thesis may be printed or downloaded for non-commercial research and scholarly purposes.
Scholarly level
Member of collection
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etd9433_PTannouri.pdf 3.07 MB

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