title: Nanofibrous adhesion: the twin of gecko adhesion.
abstract: Inspired by dusty spider dragline silk, we studied the adhesive interaction between artificial nanofibers and their aerosol surroundings. The nanofibers are found to be able to actively capture particulate matters from the environment, exactly as the spider dragline silk does. Examinations prove that such nanofibrous adhesion is insensitive to the chemical nature of the fibers and the physical states of the particulate matter and depends only on the fiber diameters. Such facts indicate that nanofibrous adhesion is a case of dry adhesion, mainly governed by van der Waals force, sharing the same mechanism to gecko adhesion. Nanofibrous adhesion is of great importance and has promising potential. For instance, in this work, nanofibers are fabricated into a thin and translucent filter, which has a filtration performance, as high as 95%, that easily outperformed ordinary ones. We believe that this adhesive property of nanofibers will open up broader applications in both scientific and industrial fields.
authors.affiliation: †Key Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Smart Interfacial Science, Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Environment, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Guangming
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.affiliation: †Key Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Smart Interfacial Science, Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Environment, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Chen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: †Key Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Smart Interfacial Science, Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Environment, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Juntao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: †Key Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Smart Interfacial Science, Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Environment, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: †Key Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Smart Interfacial Science, Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Environment, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, P.R. China.|‡Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100191, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D000268:Adhesiveness; D000818:Animals; D040761:Biomimetic Materials / Q000737:chemistry*; D057139:Nanofibers / Q000737:chemistry*; D052638:Particulate Matter / Q000737:chemistry; D047011:Silk / Q000737:chemistry; D013112:Spiders / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D052638:Particulate Matter; D047011:Silk
keywords: adhesion; dry adhesion; fine particulate matters; polymeric nanofibers