Nanomechanics of Biologically Inspired Repeatable and Hierarchical Elastomer Fibrillar Adhesives

该奖项的研究目标是开发一种受壁虎脚毛启发的最佳合成纤维粘合剂的设计方法，以提高我们对生物启发纤维阵列粘附的详细纳米力学理解，并制造和演示与生物同类产品相似的分层合成纤维粘合剂。在这项工作中提出的研究突破是利用连续体理论纳米力学模型开发了一种设计方法，用于制造分层和高性能的生物启发纤维粘合剂。这些改进的理论纤维纳米力学模型和制备的合成多级纤维粘合剂将推进生物启发粘合剂和纳米纤维粘附、接触和断裂力学的研究，并将在不久的将来产生新的自清洁和可重复的粘合剂商业产品。如果成功，本研究结果将为纺织、生物医药、空间、体育、娱乐、产品设计、机器人和包装行业创造新的可重复使用的粘合剂产品提供机会。本提案中的跨学科研究工作将转移到机械工程、生物医学工程和材料科学的许多教育活动中。由首席研究员开发的微/纳米机器人课程将在该项目中使用受生物启发的粘合剂和材料概念、模型和制造设备来设计和实施新的受生物启发的纳米材料。本项目的研究成果将通过公开讲座和暑期实习的方式传播给儿童、K-12学生和教师、大学生。该项目将在生物启发纳米材料和纳米力学领域培养未被充分代表的研究生和本科生。

The research objective of this award is to develop a design methodology for optimal synthetic fibrillar adhesives inspired by gecko foot-hairs, to improve our detailed nanomechanical understanding of biologically inspired fiber array adhesion, and to fabricate and demonstrate hierarchical synthetic fibrillar adhesives similar to their biological counterparts. The research breakthrough proposed in this work is the development of a design methodology for the fabrication of hierarchical and high performance biologically inspired fibrillar adhesives using continuum theoretical nanomechanical models. These improved theoretical fibrillar nanomechanical models and fabricated synthetic multi-level fibrillar adhesives will advance research of biologically inspired adhesives and nanofiber adhesion, contact, and fracture mechanics and will produce new self-cleaning and repeatable adhesive commercial products in the near future.If successful, the results of this research will provide an opportunity to create new repeatable adhesive products in textile, biomedical, space, sports, entertainment, product design, robotics, and packaging industry. Interdisciplinary research work in this proposal will be transferred to many educational activities in mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, and materials science. Micro/Nano-Robotics course developed by the principle investigator will use the biologically inspired adhesive and material concepts, models, and fabrication facilities in this project to design and implement new biologically inspired nanomaterials in student semester-long projects. The research results of this project will be disseminated to children, K-12 students and teachers, and college students through public lectures and summer internships. This project will train underrepresented graduate and undergraduate students in biologically inspired inspired nanomaterials and nanomechanics fields.