Researchers at Cornell University have discovered a new adhesive device that may one day literally enable people to climb walls – ala everyone’s Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. Instead of the titular spider, however, these scientists took their inspiration from a particular beetle native to Florida, which can “adhere to a leaf with a force 100 times its own weight, yet also instantly unstick itself.”
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,” (Professor Paul) Steen said. “But if you make a lot of them and can control them, like the beetle does, you can get strong adhesion forces.”
Currently the device can hold about 30 grams, which is a pretty meek payload. Eventually, researchers estimate, a one-inch device with one million micron-sided holes could hold about 15 pounds. As Popular Science notes, at this point the surface area of a shoe could support the weight of a full grown human.