Surface Wrinkles for Smart Adhesion

A novel and highly scalable approach to generating a reusable, “smart” polymer adhesive based on surface wrinkling is presented. The wrinkling approach to patterning the polymer film is based on a combination of swelling and lateral confinement. The control of adhesion, or “smart” adhesion utilizes the mechanism of contact line splitting. This enhancement is controlled by the wrinkle wavelength, which is tuned by the degree of lateral confinement.