Wet adhesion and adhesive locomotion of snails on anti-adhesive non-wetting surfaces

Creating surfaces capable of resisting liquid-mediated adhesion is extremely difficult due to the strong capillary forces that exist between surfaces. Land snails use this to adhere to and traverse across almost any type of solid surface of any orientation (horizontal, vertical or inverted), texture...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2012-05, Vol.7 (5), p.e36983-e36983
Main Authors: Shirtcliffe, Neil J, McHale, Glen, Newton, Michael I
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adhesion
Adhesive strength
Adhesives
Adhesives - metabolism
Alcohol
Animals
Biology
Biomechanical Phenomena
Chemistry
Climbing
Contact angle
Design factors
Horizontal orientation
Hydrophobic surfaces
Hydrophobicity
Littoraria irrorata
Locomotion
Materials Science
Mollusks
Mucus
Mucus - metabolism
Physics
Protective coatings
Snails
Snails - metabolism
Snails - physiology
Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate - chemistry
Surface active agents
Surfactants
Vertical orientation
Wettability
Wetting
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Summary:Creating surfaces capable of resisting liquid-mediated adhesion is extremely difficult due to the strong capillary forces that exist between surfaces. Land snails use this to adhere to and traverse across almost any type of solid surface of any orientation (horizontal, vertical or inverted), texture (smooth, rough or granular) or wetting property (hydrophilic or hydrophobic) via a layer of mucus. However, the wetting properties that enable snails to generate strong temporary attachment and the effectiveness of this adhesive locomotion on modern super-slippy superhydrophobic surfaces are unclear. Here we report that snail adhesion overcomes a wide range of these microscale and nanoscale topographically structured non-stick surfaces. For the one surface which we found to be snail resistant, we show that the effect is correlated with the wetting response of the surface to a weak surfactant. Our results elucidate some critical wetting factors for the design of anti-adhesive and bio-adhesion resistant surfaces.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0036983