Fabrication of well-defined mushroom-shaped structures for biomimetic dry adhesive by conventional photolithography and molding

Biomimetic dry adhesives have many attractive features, such as reversible and repeatable adhesion against various surfaces. This paper presents a method for the simple fabrication of biomimetic dry adhesives composed of a mushroom-shaped structure, which is based on conventional photolithography and molding. Firstly a masked and a maskless exposure are performed on the top and bottom of a photoresist, respectively, that generates microholes with an undercut after development. This structured photoresist is then used for molding, leading to mushroom-shaped structural features after sacrificing the photoresist. Because of the convenience of photolithography, the proposed method has the potential to fabricate various dry adhesives cost-efficiently.