DMREF/Collaborative Research: Switchable Underwater Adhesion through Dynamic Chemistry and Geometry

Strong adherence to underwater or wet surfaces for applications like tissue adhesion and underwater robotics is a significant challenge. This is especially apparent when switchable adhesion is required which demands rapid attachment, high adhesive capacity, and easy release. While organisms like the octopus and mussel excel at underwater adhesion, synthetic adhesives lag far behind, which is due to a fundamental knowledge gap in how chemical, geometric, and material properties interact to control underwater switchable adhesion.

This Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) award aims to incorporate mussel-inspired adhesive chemistry with octopus-inspired adhesive structures to rapidly switch adhesion in dry and wet conditions. This will accelerate and build the fundamental knowledge of how chemical, geometric, and material properties control switchable adhesion to transform the design of rapidly switchable adhesives for stiff and soft substrates in wet and dry environments.

This new knowledge will advance future economic and societal innovations in critical applications from transient tissue adhesives for prosthetic and wearable sensors to robot-assisted surgery, robotic gripping, and pick-and-place manufacturing. In addition to training and mentoring strong graduate students, the research team will develop bio-inspired adhesive gripping activities to inspire K-12 students to pursue science and engineering careers.

This will be complemented by engaging future workforce leaders in adhesion science and engineering through career development panels at national adhesion conferences.

This DMREF award supports research to combine underwater-based dynamic adhesive chemistry with active adhesive geometry to determine how adhesion can be switched underwater. The goal of this work is to provide the fundamental understanding needed to design adhesives with tunable adhesion strength, high adhesion switching ratios, and rapid switching times.

This will be achieved by integrating experiments, simulations, and machine learning into a cooperative framework. This research will establish for the first time a design methodology that amplifies the benefits of chemistry and geometry into a single underwater switchable adhesive system. This design methodology will provide opportunities to speed up the switching of dynamic chemistry by releasing the interface with active materials and enhancing the adhesion strength of geometric structures with dynamic adhesive chemistry.

In contrast to prior work which has studied how chemistry or geometry independently influences adhesion, this work will uniquely determine how dynamic chemistry and active materials combine to control adhesion, providing new paradigms in adhesive design.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.