Acarid Suction Cup-Inspired Rapid and Tunable Magnetic Adhesion

Adhesion appears in nature as a kind of clinging strategy for living creatures to survive in a complex environment. Nevertheless, the artificial counterpart applications are limited by many factors, such as slow responding rate and high driving voltage. In this paper, a novel magnetic adhesion achieved by the actuation of Ecoflex embedded with iron particles is presented, which is demonstrated by a magnetic suction cup (MSC) that can switch the adhesion state within 500 ms. Compared with suction cups made of the dielectric elastomer in existing literature, the present work's driving voltage is safe for humans. Furthermore, a mechanical model is developed and verified to optimize the design of the MSCs. By applying an altering magnetic field, the adhesive force varying with time exhibits complex waveforms such as sinusoidal wave, triangle wave, square wave, and even pulse wave can be achieved. For some situations that large adhesion force is not necessarily considered while the adhesion requires to be accurately and quickly controlled, such as transfer printing and intelligent sensing, the magnetic adhesion demonstrated in this article will enrich the future available applications.

Automated summary

The novel magnetic adhesion achieved by the actuation of Ecoflex embedded with iron particles can switch the adhesion state quickly and is safe for humans in terms of driving voltage. By optimizing the design using a mechanical model and varying the adhesive force with different magnetic fields, complex waveforms can be achieved. This magnetic adhesion technology demonstrated in the article shows promising applications for transfer printing and intelligent sensing where accurate and rapid control is needed.