A poster of the film Spiderman, (top) IIT scientist Animangsu Ghatak at work

New Delhi, Oct. 13: Chemical engineer Animangsu Ghatak has created a reusable super-adhesive that could find everyday use but might also enable robots — or humans — to scamper up walls like Spiderman.

Ghatak and his colleagues at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, were inspired by lizards and tree frogs to develop the sticky coating, which proves that an adhesive can be made up to 30 times stronger as well as reusable.

“We’re trying to mimic something commonly seen in biology,” Ghatak told The Telegraph.

The pads on the feet and toes of lizards, tree frogs and some insects possess special features — either hair-like structures or fine geometrical patterns — that give them a strong grip on surfaces. Such features allow the animals to reuse their adhesive toe pads and give them legendary adhesive strength.

Biologists have long observed that tree frogs use their toe pads to hang from trees. Some ants can walk upside down while carrying many times their own weight, and lizards can take several steps each second as they move up or across walls or trees.

Ghatak and his colleagues Abhijit Mazumdar and Ashutosh Sharma coated a glass surface with an elastic adhesive and made tiny micro-channels within the adhesive, filling them with oil.

Their findings were published yesterday in the journal Science.

“The oil-filled micro-channels embedded within the adhesive increase its strength, while the elasticity of this adhesive material makes it reusable over and over again,” said Ghatak, assistant professor at the IIT Kanpur chemical engineering department.

Although this laboratory technology has the potential for multiple applications, the IIT Kanpur team forgot to file a patent application in their rush to publish their findings in a research journal.

In the absence of a patent, any direct application of this technology in its current state is unlikely to lead to any commercial benefits for the researchers.

“I guess we were just excited about this,” Ghatak said. “We’re demonstrating a principle.… I think we can patent future forms.”

The scientists believe that with some refinement, the technology could be used to develop cleaner adhesives that won’t leave a mark when the sticker is pulled out. “It’s nice not to have the residue of a price sticker on a gift,” Ghatak said.

It may also have more exotic applications — robots that can climb up walls and walk on the ceiling.

Ghatak said similar efforts were under way in laboratories elsewhere in the world. The technology could also be used to develop gloves and apparel for humans that would allow people to crawl on walls, he said.

“We can fly, we can swim, we can go into space, but humans haven’t been able to crawl up a wall yet,” Ghatak said.

“The adhesive can act as a quick-release coating so that the tape, while sticking well, can be peeled off easily,” W. Jon P. Barnes, a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, said, commenting on the work by the IIT Kanpur team in the same issue of Science.

“(The adhesive) can be used again with no reduction in adhesive efficiency,” he said.