After winning the 2019 Future Tech Breakthrough Award, we had more chances to verify the domain usage and found that the biomimetic adhesive is an excellent interface between machine and product, providing easy combination and separation without residue left. The traditional tapes are suitable for permanent attachment and heavy-load uses; however, they are too sticky to be peeled in industrial usage, restricting the development of industrial automation. We construct a system containing fixture of equipment and dry adhesives via integrating AI and materials knowledge to form special pastable fixtures. There are 2 applications: (1)Advanced processes. We offer dry adhesives combined with fixtures for >230 oC treatment without outgassing, high-temperature endurance, and high shear force to improve production yields. (2)Bionic soft grippers. We develop an octopus-inspired gripper and a gecko-inspired gripper array that can grab various and irregular objects to improve production efficiency.

The advanced manufacturing in the high tech industry and the automated production processes usually require massive use of adhesive tapes; however, the traditional tapes often suffer from peeling difficulty and residual glue. The biomimetic adhesion system provides the functions of fixation, protection and grasping to fit industrial demands. We incorporate the novel biomimetic adhesives, displaying excellent properties of no-residual-glue, easy-to-peel, repeatable adhesion, adjustable adhesion forces with applications, with mechanical actuation to develop novel bionic soft grippers that can grab various, irregular objects, and also produce advanced patches and fixtures that endure high-temperature processing and corresponding shear stress for the assistance of industrial mass production.

The biomimetic adhesives combined with fixtures and related equipment can be applied to meet the requirements of no-outgassing, no-residual-glue, easy peeling, and high-temperature processing, which are devoted into advanced technology and manufacturing. Therefore, the adhesion technology can improve the current production line processes, like wafer handling, grinding, polishing, coating, dicing, wire-bonding, molding, EMI-shielding, etc. for their efficiency and yield. Moreover, the novel bionic flexible gripper design can seize irregular shapes, various materials, and different weights of objects on the production line, figuring out most of gripping problems in industrial automation.