‘Electroadhesive’ stamp picks up and puts down microscopic structures

Nanowerk  October 11, 2019 Mechanical pick-and-place technologies cannot manipulate smaller objects whose surface forces dominate over gravity, and emerging microtransfer printing methods require multidirectional motion, heating, and/or chemical bonding to switch adhesion. A team of researchers in the US (MIT, University of Pennsylvania) has developed soft nanocomposite electroadhesives (SNEs), comprising sparse forests of dielectric-coated carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which have electrostatically switchable dry adhesion. SNEs exhibit 40-fold lower nominal dry adhesion than typical solids, yet their adhesion is increased >100-fold by applying 30 V to the CNTs. They characterized the scaling of adhesion with surface morphology, dielectric thickness, and applied voltage […]