
New Bionic Adhesive Foil Inspired by Nature’s Water Beetle

At Saarland University Professor Nachtigall developed a new adhesion mechanism based on a bionic approach. The water beetle possesses a lot of tiny adhesion elements (suckers) which even work, if the beetle is dead. Additionally the beetle uses further adhesion mechanisms.
Therefore the newly developed mechanism consists of tiny elements which are responsible for the adhesion on wet surfaces. On the other hand a conventional adhesive can be placed into the space between for dry surfaces. The elements use the principal of statistical adhesion. This means that not every element is involved in order to get a sufficient adhesion. It is also very easy to remove the foil, because each element loosens separately without any big effort. Therefore it is not necessary to tear away the total adhesion area synchronously, it is enough just to pull at one end.
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Universität des Saarlandes Wissens- und Technologietransfer GmbH PatentVerwertungsAgentur der saarländischen Hochschulen
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Dipl.-Kfm. Axel Koch MBA, Dr. Dirk Schwingel