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Tendril, adhesive disc and super adhesive effect of climbing plant
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- South China University of Technology, College of Materials Science and Engineering
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- Document Type:
- Manuscript
- Date:
- Received 12 January 2008 02:20 UTC; Posted 15 January 2008
- Subjects:
- Biotechnology, Bioinformatics
- Abstract:
Understanding the super adhesion mechanism of biological system is of great scientific interest and a prerequisite for bioinspired design of adhesive systems. To investigate the versatile climbing plant requires the development of new methods. Here I present strategies to fully study the super adhesive effect of climbing plant Parthenocissus tricuspidata by the first time measuring the mass and the attached area of single adhesive disc, by further determining the microscopic structure and the adhesive strength of single adhesive disc and by finally elucidating the adhesion mechanism in cellular and molecular level using the classical theories and the proposed new hypothesis and model. I have measured that a single mature adhesive disc has an average mass of only about 0.0005 g, an average attached area of about 1.22 sq mm and an adhesive force of about 13.7 N. I have found that a single adhesive disc can on average support a weight produced together by the stem, leaf, branchlet and tendril which is 260 times greater than its own weight during the growing, and can sustain the maximum pulling force which is 2,800,000 times higher than that produced by its own weight. Microscopic experiments show some new microstructures which have never been reported and reveal that the adhesive disc has super adhesive property which inspires us to fabricate a lot of mimic adhesives that have potential applications in biomedical science, bioelectronics and space science and technology.
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61 votes
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8 comments
The findings are important for understanding scientific value of climbing plant. This work is a good beginning for studying nanobionics and bionic materials based on the especial function of plant, which may be a milestone in the future research.
Being inspired by nature is the trend for developing a new generation of functional materials. This paper discovered a surprising phenomenon; how can little discs sustain a gigantic weight? This is worth investigating. The sooner they can catch the chance, the better they can make a great work.
The author has done a good beginning on the research of climbing plant ─ Parthenocissus Tricuspidata. However, for the new hypothesis and model to describe the adhesion mechanism, the more experimental evidences supporting the hypothesis and model have not found yet, although those evidences are indeed hard to get. Anyhow, let us keep our more eyes on this work.
This submission shows us a few new senses to further understand the correlation between the microstructure and the super adhesive effect of climbing plant, which is a prerequisite for making great breakthrough. Indeed, it is obviously to need the carefully designed experiments to support the proposed new theory and hypothesis.
In this report,a lot of carefully designed experiments to be never reported in the literatures have been carried out to reveal so attractive natural phenomena,which let us easily share with enough research results.The author is the first researcher to eyes on such phenomena.More important,a few new senses are contributed in this good beginning research article,which will be possible to inaugurate a new study field where you may make a great breakthrough in the future.Let’s go on doing hard works hand in hand.
Climbing plant-Parthenocissus Tricuspidata attracted great interests for centuries before this submission .In this paper,author let us share with many meaningful findings.Furthermore,we can catch the newest senses about the mentioned plant in this article.I believe that new breakthrough will be made in the future if we focus our attention on this matter and work hard in this field.
The work done by the author is of great scientific interest and provides insight information about the super adhesive effect and other properties of climbing plant (Parthenocissus Tricuspidata ). Entirely new findings have been reported by the author which may be highly beneficial for further research in this area. In my opinion such type of work will revolutionize the research in the area of environmental science and technology, biomedical science, bioelectronics and space science and technology.
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- This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
- How to cite this document:
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Deng, Wenli. Tendril, adhesive disc and super adhesive effect of climbing plant. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2008.1513.1> (2008)
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Other versions of this document in Nature Precedings
Version number Document title Date v2 Posted 23 January 2008 Other versions of this document elsewhere on the web
None known.
Deng Wenli on 22 January 2008 01:11 UTC
This work is of great scientific interest and an excellent beginning for fabricating bioinspired super adhesive nanomaterials which will be potentially used in space shuttler,satellite, robot, and etc. In the future, if we can fabricate such super adhesive that replace the used adhesive which was used to stick the adiabatic ceramic piece to the crust of the Columbia Space Shuttle, which would protect the Columbia Space Shuttle from blast in 2003. This work is also useful for researchers go in for studying in the field of plant biology, bionics, robotics and environmental science and technology. In a word, this work will may be a milestone in the future researches.