Bioinspired structured adhesives
have promising applications in
the fields of robotics, electronics, medical engineering, and so forth.
The strong adhesion and friction as well as the durability of bioinspired
hierarchical fibrillar adhesives are essential for their applications,
which require fine submicrometer structures to stay stable during
repeated use. Here, we develop a bioinspired bridged micropillars
array (BP), which realizes a 2.18-fold adhesion and a 2.02-fold friction
as compared to that of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) original
micropillar arrays. The aligned bridges offer BP strong anisotropic
friction. The adhesion and friction of BP can be finely regulated
by changing the modulus of the bridges. Moreover, BP shows strong
adaptability to surface curvature (ranging from 0 to 800 m–1), excellent durability over 500 repeating cycles of attachment/detachment,
and self-cleaning ability. This study presents a novel approach for
designing robust structured adhesives with strong and anisotropic
friction, which may find applications in areas such as climbing robots
and cargo transportation.