Reversible dry micro-fibrillar adhesives with thermally controllable adhesion

This work reports thin-film terminated micro-fibrillar adhesives made of adhesive polymers and shape memory polymers as reversible dry adhesives with thermally controllable adhesion. Structurally different adhesives were fabricated by coating a continuous thin layer of an elastomeric adhesive polymer onto either a flat or a fibrillar shape memory polymer surface. Experimental results exhibited that pull-off forces of the adhesives can be up to four times different depending on thermal conditions. These differences originate from the temperature dependence of either the intrinsic adhesion properties of the adhesive polymer and/or the stiffness of the sub-surface shape memory polymer.