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  geCKo Materials, a company that produces artificial gecko material, came out of Professor Mark Cutkosky’s lab in Stanford (Muller, 2023, 0:40). It is an adhesive that is inspired by the way geckos can scale walls and move about on the ceiling. Its website states that the key feature of this adhesive is that it mimics the gecko’s foot structure, which allows it to cling to almost any rough or smooth surface. According to a YouTube video, when observing a toe from a gecko under a microscope, it is made up of very fine structures called spatulas which are less than one micrometre across. Although it is currently impossible to replicate this intricate branching structure, the tape uses a crude approximation of it. Instead of spatulas, the tape is covered with rows of sharp silicon wedges with tips that are around one micrometre (Muller, 2023, 5:14). Unlike how sticky tape works, where the tape sticks due to the chemicals found on one surface of the tape, gecko adhesive is a dry adh...

  geCKo Materials, a company that is producing artificial gecko material, came out of Professor Mark Cutkosky’s lab in Stanford. It is an adhesive that is inspired by the way geckos can scale walls and move about on the ceiling. The key feature of this adhesive is that it mimics the gecko’s foot structure, which allows it to cling to almost any rough or smooth surface. If a toe from a gecko’s is placed under a microscope, it can be observed that it is made up of very fine structures called spatulas which are less than one micrometre across. Although currently it is impossible to replicate this intricate branching structure, the tape makes use of a crude approximation of it. Instead of spatulas, the tape is covered with rows of sharp silicon wedges with tips that are around one micrometre. Unlike how sticky tape works, where the tape sticks due to the chemicals found on one surface of the tape, gecko adhesive is a dry adhesive that is easy to remove without the use of force at all...