World Cup players will wear friction-engineered shoes made with microstructure technology from the lab of Illinois Grainger Engineering professor Bill King.

Shoes with surfaces that stay smooth for low-speed agility and instantly morph into high-friction grips for control over powerful kicks.

They sound like something that soccer players can only dream of, but they’re here. The Predator line of Adidas cleats — known for giving players precision ball control — now incorporates Nanostrike+ surface mesh with microstructures that instantly adapt to the player’s movements.

They will be worn in the 2026 World Cup by players from England, Germany, and Spain.

The shoes are only possible because of tech from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Grainger College of Engineering.

Almost 20 years ago, mechanical science and engineering professor Bill King, an expert in manufacturing technology, developed techniques for manufacturing polymers with engineered surfaces that have a powerful feature: controllable friction.

Photo Credit: Heather Coit/Grainger Engineering

Today, the Adidas shoes incorporate pillar-shaped microstructures made with the technology developed in King’s lab. As a result, the friction between the shoe and the ball changes depending on the force applied by the player.

“My lab first worked on polymer microstructure fabrication back in the mid-2000s when the science was quite new,” King said. “Since then, it has grown into a mature technology used in healthcare, transportation and now athletic wear. Sometimes the biggest advantages come from the smallest things — in this case, microstructures.”

When King first began researching polymer microstructures, it was in the context of microelectronics fabrication. However, he realized that it was possible to scale the technology in a way that makes microstructures feasible for consumer products. His lab received funding from DARPA, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation to develop the manufacturing techniques.

“Engineered surfaces are amazing because they lead to new material properties not possible with traditional chemistry and materials science,” King said. “Properties like engineered friction performance are only possible through the mechanical design of microstructures. The key obstacle has always been how to manufacture these microstructures at scale. Manufacturing is the bridge to unlock surface engineering.”

The initial stage of the work received government support for potential applications in transportation and defense. However, after King’s lab published the results, he was contacted by industrial manufacturers interested in scaling up the technology.

In response to this commercial interest, King founded the company Hoowaki, which has focused on developing healthcare applications exploiting the self-cleaning, hydrophobic and gripping properties of King’s engineered surfaces. Now, athletic wear makers have also taken note.

The performance gains from microstructure surfaces — controllable friction, repelling water and self-cleaning in dirty conditions — have been in development for several years, and the Adidas shoes with micro-pillars are the first to come to market.

“Athletes are always looking for advantages from their equipment, and these shoes demonstrate that microstructures can give a big one,” King said. “Soccer players normally have to choose between low- and high-friction for their shoes, but now they can have both.”

When asked how he feels seeing his technology develop over two decades from fundamental research into the most advanced athletic equipment, King said, “I’m obviously rooting for U.S. Men’s, but if they get knocked out, I’m rooting for the shoes.”