Could humans one day walk on walls, like Spider-Man? A palm-sized device invented at Cornell that uses water surface tension as an adhesive bond just might make it possible.

The rapid adhesion mechanism could lead to such applications as shoes or gloves that stick and unstick to walls, or Post-it-like notes that can bear loads, according to Paul Steen, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, who invented the device with Michael Vogel, a former postdoctoral associate.

The device consists of a flat plate patterned with holes, each on the order of microns (one-millionth of a meter). A bottom plate holds a liquid reservoir, and in the middle is another porous layer. An electric field applied by a common 9-volt battery pumps water through the device and causes droplets to squeeze through the top layer. The surface tension of the exposed droplets makes the device grip another surface - much the way two wet glass slides stick together.

"In our everyday experience, these forces are relatively weak," Steen said. "But if you make a lot of them and can control them, like the beetle does, you can get strong adhesion forces."

For example, one of the researchers' prototypes was made with about 1,000 300-micron-sized holes, and it can hold about 30 grams - more than 70 paper clips. They found that as they scaled down the holes and packed more of them onto the device, the adhesion got stronger. They estimate, then, that a one-square-inch device with millions of 1-micron-sized holes could hold more than 15 pounds.

"Paul Steen and Michael Vogel's surface tension-based adhesive device with a lego man payload (Credit: Michael Vogel)"

Source: Cornell University