"The stickiness we have achieved with the nano tetrapods is remarkable, because as far as we could verify, no one has ever made silicone and Teflon stick to each other at all," says co-author Lars Heepe, PhD student from the Zoological Institute of Kiel University, who precisely measured the adhesion and described what the stapled material looks like on the microscopic scale. "Measuring adhesion quantitatively is not as easy as it looks, precise experiments have to be carried out in order to prove the function of the linkers and rule out all errors," says Professor Stanislav Gorb, leading the group Functional Morphology and Biomechanics.

Three research groups from different backgrounds combined their expertise in material science, chemistry and biomechanics in this study within the Collaborative Research Center 677 "Function by Switching" (CRC 677). For Rainer Adelung and his colleagues, this study is not the end of the project: "We are feeding our results directly into both practical applications as well as further fundamental research."

The scientists’ local business partner nanoproofed GmbH is currently developing a product for paintings on top of silicone. In the framework of CRC 677, the staples are the basis for developing biomimetic adhesives, for which adhesion can be switched on and off by light of different colours.

Xin Jin, Jan Strueben, Lars Heepe, Alexander Kovalev, Yogendra K. Mishra, Rainer Adelung, Stanislav N. Gorb, Anne Staubitz: Joining the un-joinable: Adhesion between low surface energy polymers using tetrapodal ZnO linkers, In: Advanced Materials Early View, August 24, 2012, DOI: 10.1002/adma201201780: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adma.201201780

Website of CRC 677: http://www.sfb677.uni-kiel.de