This was the first proof of concept of so-called "gecko tape," a microfabricated adhesive based on the same principle that was developed by geckos in the course of evolution.

"It cannot be excluded that one day 'Spiderman gloves' could be developed using gecko tape as the basic material. Less science fictional would be chemical-free adhesives that work under unusual conditions, for example, in vacuum, space or under water.”

If you have been anywhere in the tropics, you have probably watched geckos who effortlessly scale vertical walls and rest even on ceilings waiting for flies. How do they do this? Gecko feet are covered by millions of tiny (submicron) hairs. Each hair sticks to surfaces thanks to a minute attraction that again everyone is familiar with: sprinkle dust or facial powder on a glass plate, and many particles would not want to fall down when the glass turned upside down.

Geckos learned how to add these tiny forces from individual hairs together to generate quite a formidable aggregate force. Our paper was a crude demonstration that it is possible to mimic this type of adhesion. This demo sparked a frantic activity in the field.

It cannot be excluded that one day, so-called "Spiderman gloves" could be developed using gecko tape as their basic material. Less science fictional would be chemical-free adhesives that work under unusual conditions, for example, in a vacuum, in space, or underwater.

I am a physicist trying to understand how properties of various materials change when they become increasingly smaller, submicron or nanometer in size. I accidentally learned from literature about the mechanism allowing geckos to climb and was mesmerized by its conceptual simplicity. Also, it was exactly within the spatial range of our microfabrication facilities and expertise. So I decided to give it a go and, to my own surprise, it worked out nicely. Only later, I realized that there was a lot of luck involved and, unintentionally, we also mimicked a hierarchical structure of gecko’s toes, not only hairs. (This was a mistake to assume that hairs were all what one needed for the tape, and this mistake is still repeated time after time by researchers following our steps).

I am no longer involved in this research area. Mostly because I do not see how I can contribute further using available facilities and expertise. Also, another equally interesting material—graphene—was discovered by our group and consumes all my time now.

However, I watch with interest developments on gecko tape and, despite there having been more hype than real news in the last few years, there is a good chance that gecko tape will become commercially available soon. Particularly promising seems to be such tapes based on carbon nanotubes, which do mimic the required hierarchical structure. View previous comment.

I do not think so. But of course, as any society develops from meritocracy through democracy into idiocracy, I can imagine soon careerists and politicians trying gecko-tape gloves to scale their glass ceilings.