Robust and reversible wet attachments are important for medical engineering and wearable electronics. Although ultrastrong capillarity from interfacial nano-thick liquid bridges creates tree frog’s strong wet friction, its unstable nano-liquid characteristic challenges further wet friction enhancement. Here, unique hierarchical micro-nano fibrous pillars have been discovered on Chinese bush crickets exhibiting a robust wet friction ~3.8 times higher than tree frog’s bulk pillar. By introducing a nano-fibrous pillar array covered with thin films (NFPF), the pillar’s separation position switches from the rear to front side compared with bulk pillars, indicating the interfacial contact stress shifting from compressing to stretching. This largely decreases the interfacial separation stress to form more stable and larger nano-liquid bridges. The NFPF array with self-splitting of interfacial liquid and contact stress further guards such interfacial stress shifting to ensure a ~1.9 times friction enhancement. Last, the theories are established, and the applications on wearable electronics are validated.

Molecular-level liquid bridges at contact interfaces have a much more important impact on micro-/nanosystems and flexible wearable sensors. However, their dynamic behavior and mechanical properties are still vague due to the limitations of current characterization methods. Here, under the support of molecular dynamic simulations on smooth, pillared, and concave pillared plates, the heterogeneous anisotropic pressure distribution of layered liquids is found to be distinct from the isotropic pressure distribution in the macroscale liquid bridge. Oscillating interfacial contact forces appear in the period of layered liquid compression due to the oscillating system free energy, in which the peak forces greatly increase as the number of layers decreases. The layered liquids with impressively remarkable solid-like pressure-bearing capacity at the gigapascal level and exceptional fluidity along confined atomic layers can spontaneously strengthen adhesion vertically and facilitate pressure transport horizontally, respectively. The significance of layered liquids in contact systems can improve our understanding of liquid bridges at the molecular level, which is beneficial for interfacial mechanical regulation.