Engineering

How surface roughness influences the adhesion of soft materials

Adhesive tape or sticky notes are easy to attach to a surface, but are difficult to remove. This phenomenon, known as adhesion hysteresis, can be fundamentally observed in soft, elastic materials: Adhesive contact is formed ...

Engineering

Novel tactile display using computer-controlled surface adhesion

A group of researchers at Osaka University developed a novel two-dimensional (2-D) graphical tactile display to which one-dimensional (1D) adhesive information could be added by controlling adhesion of designated portions ...

Robotics

Centimeter-long snail robot is powered with light

Researchers at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, Poland, used liquid crystal elastomer technology to demonstrate a bio-inspired micro-robot capable of mimicking the adhesive locomotion of snails and slugs ...

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Adhesive

An adhesive, or glue, is a mixture in a liquid or semi-liquid state that adheres or bonds items together. Adhesives may come from either natural or synthetic sources. The types of materials that can be bonded are vast but they are especially useful for bonding thin materials. Adhesives cure (harden) by either evaporating a solvent or by chemical reactions that occur between two or more constituents.

Adhesives are advantageous for joining thin or dissimilar materials, minimizing weight, and when a vibration dampening joint is needed. A disadvantage to adhesives is that they do not form an instantaneous joint, unlike most other joining processes, because the adhesive needs time to cure.

The earliest known date for a simple glue is 200,000 BC and for a compound glue 70,000 BC.

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