If you ever wanted to climb walls like Spidey, help is on the way.
The special suit will be coated with millions of microscopic carbon nanotubes which would adhere to walls using an intermolecular phenomena called van der Walls forces. This effectively mimics the way geckos and spiders climb walls using millions of tiny hairs on their limbs to “stick” to the surfaces.
To break the adhesion, all a user needs to do is to “peel” away with little effort. Currently only a theoretical idea, Professor Nicola Pugno from the Polytechnic of Turin who has proposed this idea, predicts a working model by 2017.
There is one small problem: tiny dirt particles are attracted to the nanotubes and clog them, thus reducing the stickiness. One solution being floated around is to make the ocntact areas hydrophobic, i.e. water repellent.
No, the man climbing up your office windows is not spidey: he’s just the window cleaner!
References: vnunet.com, Journal of Physics
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