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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 May 16.
Published in final edited form as: ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2015 Feb 25;7(9):5480–5487. doi: 10.1021/am509163m

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Schematic illustration showing the biomimetic approach of synthetic foot toes inspired by the hierarchical design of a gecko’s toes. (a) The brain of a natural gecko, which sends out bioelectric signals to muscle tissue; (b) foreleg muscle, which controls the ability of the forefoot toes to abduct, rotate, and adduct; (c) forefeet toes, on which millions of setae grow; (d) scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image of setae. A–D demonstrate the biomimetic targets correlated to those shown in a–d, respectively. (A) Signal-generating chip that sends out an electric signal to drive the IPMC to be back and forth. (B) Multiple images are overlaid to show continuous actuations of the IPMC actuator (shown in dark black) attached to a thick PDMS membrane (shown in light red), with a thickness of around 2 mm. The IPMC membrane is actuated by a sinusoidal wave with a frequency of 0.1 Hz under a voltage of 3.0 V. (C) Synthetic gecko-inspired foot toes made of PMVS micropillars attached to IPMC. (D) SEM image of PMVS micropillars.