  Inspired by adhesive bio-filamentous structure, such as bacterial pili, this
work details the methods used to fabricate and characterize a surface-anchored
array of thin, flexible and shape-responsive mesoscale polymer ribbons with a
length-to-thickness aspect ratio of up to 100,000. The resulting structures
exhibit geometrically complex and dynamic morphologies consistent with
elastocapillary bending that experience an increase in curvature over hours of
aging due to creep. We develop a computational image analysis framework to
generate 3D reconstructions of these densely crowded geometries and extract
quantitative descriptors to demonstrate morphological changes due to aging. We
demonstrate the robustness of this quantitative method by characterizing the
creep-induced change in an aging ribbon array's shape and develop a scaling
relationship to describe the importance of ribbon thickness for shape and
dynamical observations. These methods demonstrate an essential baseline to
probe morphology-property relationships of mesoscale polymer ribbon arrays
fabricated from a variety of materials in numerous environments. Through the
introduction of perfluorodecalin droplets, we illustrate the potential of these
ribbon arrays towards applications in adhesive, microrobotic, and biomedical
devices.
