Experimental Investigation of Adhesion of Synthetic Pyramid Shape Gecko-like Micro-structured Adhesive for Grippers Made of Silgard 184

In recent years, gecko-like dry adhesives have been used in robotic grippers and climbing robots. The adhesive has been introduced as a new approach for manipulating flat objects in production lines. The method has several advantages over other, more traditional, gripping methods such as lower power consumption compared to suction-based systems or the ability to handle non-magnetic materials. Directional Gecko-like adhesives are based on the frictional adhesion and employ asymmetric feature, mostly wedge shape, and perform only in one direction. In this paper, design and fabrication process of a new pyramid shape Gecko-like adhesive using silgard 184 has been described. The new microstructures has the ability of adhesion in several directions, and the contact surface between the adhesive and substrate increases and the possibility of self-sticking between adjacent stalks decreases. Chemical machining and microlithography were used for manufacturing molds in this research and the details were described. The performance of proposed adhesive was evaluated using an experimental set-up and adhesion force was measured on different substrate. During experiments, adhesion was controlled via applied shear force to adhesive. The experimental results showed 30% increase in adhesion using proposed adhesive in comparison with the existing similar adhesive.