PVC gel-based electro-adhesion on extremely rough surfaces

•A strategy to fabricate electro-adhesion pads based on the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gel is designed.•Adhesion strength of the PVC gel pads are measured under lap shear and pull-off loading cases.•Compared to silicone rubber-based pads, PVC gel pads show enhanced adhesion strength on rough surfaces with a lower operating voltage. Electrostatic adhesion, also known as electro-adhesion, has been employed in many robotic devices for dynamic adhesion and shows fast switching between adhesive/non-adhesive states on demand. However, a well-known challenge for electro-adhesion is to achieve strong adhesion on rough surfaces with a reasonably low operating voltage. Herein, we report a simple strategy to fabricate electro-adhesion pads based on polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gel, which can achieve strong adhesion (ten times stronger than silicone rubber-based electro-adhesion pads) on rough conductive surfaces with a relatively low operating voltage (