Enhancing dry adhesives and replica molding with ethyl cyano-acrylate

The use of cyano-acrylate to improve the performance of dry adhesives and their method of fabrication is investigated. Specifically, the contributions of this work are: (1) a new adhesion method to adhere to a large variety of surfaces, (2) a strategy to increase the compliance of dry adhesives, and (3) an improved fabrication process for micro-structured dry adhesives based on replica molding. For the first contribution, the adhesion method consists of anchoring a micro-structured dry adhesive to a surface through a layer of hardened ethyl cyano-acrylate (ECA). This method increases the adhesion of the orders of magnitude at the expense of leaving residue after detachment. However, this method preserves reusability. For the second contribution, a double-sided dry adhesive is obtained by introducing a substrate with a millimeter-sized pillar structure, which enabled further increasing adhesion. For the third contribution, an ECA layer is used as a mold for the fabrication of new adhesives. These new types of molds proved able to produce dry adhesives with high reproducibility and low degradation.