Physicists pull off the gecko's feat

[n2doc]

For years scientists have tried — and failed — to engineer materials that would enable robots to mimic the gecko’s ability to scale walls, windows and seemingly any other surface. Now, a team from the US has developed a nanotube material that is not just a match for gecko feet but 10 times more adhesive.

Look close enough at a gecko foot and you will see an ordered, forest-like structure — roughly half a million fine hairs that each sprout into hundreds of even thinner, spatula-shaped tips. When these tips come into close contact with a surface they induce strong van der Waals forces that keep the foot anchored — that is, until the gecko decides to peel it off.

In the past scientists have attempted to copy this hair structure by fabricating arrays of polymer pillars, but these can sustain little more than a third of the gecko’s adhesive force. Although nanotubes have proved better, it is difficult to replicate the delicate tip structure of gecko hairs that would enable the nanotubes to reach their theoretical limit.

more:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/36185

[Joanie Baloney]

1. Awwww

Can't the scientists study the gecko's Spiderman-like abilities without removing its "feat"?? Poor geckos!

;)

[soothsayer]

2. I was sad because I had no shoes, but then I met a gecko who had no feat