Analysis of Nanotechnology on Geckos ability to stick

on walls
Partanu Ardi Aksa*
* Physics Engineering, Institut Teknologi Bandung

I. INTRODUCTION

T he extraordinary adhesive properties of gecko lizards have been amazing. They can move up and down walls or trees in any
direction even with its head face downwards. Gecko has the ability to attach and detach their adhesive toe pads in
milliseconds while running with speeds up to 20 body lengths per second on vertical and even inverted surfaces. There are many
theories that explain how this thing work in many principle of study. In matter of physics, gecko’s ability to stick on almost every
surfaces can be explained by one mechanism that can cause 2 hydrophobic surfaces to adhere in air and that is the Van der Waals
force.

An experiment was conducted at 2012 to look at the structural build of a gecko toe pad. [1] It shows that gecko toe pad apparently
has mesoscale array of setae, each of those array arranged in nearly grid-like patterns. A closer look at microstructure would look
like array of hair called setae. A spatular is a single stalk of this hair, zooming at approximately 10 µm. And zooming at the end of
a stalk under SEM, the single stalk consists of many strands of hair called spatula with about 100-200 nm diameter. [2]

The Van der Waals interaction between the individual spatula and the surface of the substrate are the reason that gecko adhesion is
material independent. The Van der Waals force is a term used to refer to intermolecular forces. Atoms have electrons that are
negatively charged particles. These revolve around the nucleus. These electrons keep moving, leading to times when a large
number of electrons collect at one end of a neutral molecule. Since electrons carry negative charge, the end of the molecule
develops a slight negative charge. In this way, the small negative charge induces the further development of such small charges in
the surrounding molecules and a small force of attraction occurs. These forces are known as Van der Waals forces. [3] And since
the strengths of these forces is quite small, it will happen when these two molecules come close to each other. The spatula on
gecko toe pad drastically increased the surface area contact with walls so that the Van der Waals force can come into play. The
Van der Waals force is the sum of attractive or repulsive force between molecules. We can break it down in to 3 components.
Force between two permanent dipoles called Keesom force, between a permanent dipole and a corresponding induced dipole
known as Debeye force and the force between fluctuating dipoles known as London dispersion force. For Van der Waals
interaction between macroscopic bodies we have to sum all of these 3 components.

Spatular tips have radius of 200nm and while adhering we can say they are spaced approximately 0.3nm from the surface. Gecko
foot has approximately 230mm2 of area and a density of 14400 setae/mm2 and each setae branches out in to 100 – 1000 spatular
tips generating an adhesive force of 0.04µN for a single spatula. Calculated with referring to the Van der Waals force, a gecko of
50 g body weight produce is about 64N. The calculated adhesive force of gecko setal array is as shown the sum of mostly London
dispersion forces between molecules in individual spatula and the surface. As London dispersion forces work amongst all
molecules the strong adhesion that setae arrays produce is material independent.

REFERENCES
[1] R. Domen, Understanding and reproducing the Gecko adhesive system, University of Ljubljana, 2012.
[2] Watson, Gregory & Green, David & Schwarzkopf, Lin & Li, Xin & Cribb, Bronwen & Myhra, Sverre & Watson, Jolanta. (2015). A gecko skin micro/nano
structure – A low adhesion, superhydrophobic, anti-wetting, self-cleaning, biocompatible, antibacterial surface. Acta biomaterialia. 21.
10.1016/j.actbio.2015.03.007.
[3] J, Mahak. (2018, August). How do Lizards climb walls. Retrieved from https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/animals/how-do-lizards-climb-walls.html.