Adhesion Property of Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotubes Under High Temperature

Because of having millions of well vertically aligned hairs on their feet, geckos can fluently walk on the vertical walls and even ceilings. Vertically aligned carbon nanotube (VACNT) array has been widely used as a bio-mimetic adhesive due to the structural and functional similarity with gecko's foot hairs. Besides, the advanced properties of VACNT make it a prominent functional adhesive. In this paper, the dry adhesion of VACNT array under the temperature range of 25-150℃ is studied. Because of the intrinsic excellent thermal resistance, VACNT array shows great adhesion under high temperature. When the temperature changes from 25℃ to 150℃, the shear adhesive strength of VACNT array deceases from 12.04 N/cm2 to 6.08 N/cm2. Though there is a 50 percent decrease, the adhesive strength of 6.08 N/cm2 is still remarkable for dry adhesive materials. The VACNT's micro structures are analyzed by SEM and the adhesion change phenomenon is interpreted in theory. We believe that the robust high temperature adaptation of VACNT dry adhesive can be used in many extreme environments, such as aerospace application.