Bio-inspired materials

Dujardin E, Mann S (2002) Bio-inspired materials chemistry. Adv Mater 14 775-788... 

In our pursuit of bioartificial systems to be delivered or containing an enzyme that plays its specific role of a catalyst for a bioreaction to modify such chemical or functional property of host matrix, our group investigated different possibilities of preparing bio-compatible, bio-fimctional and bio-inspired materials for advanced applications in the biomaterials field. 

In the past decade, the authors group investigated the properties and the potential of new bio-inspired materials, named bioartificial materials , in which... 

The implementation of multistage mass spectrometry significantly improved analysis of novel bio-inspired materials that combined both... 

At this point we note that the bio-inspired approach, coupled with nanochemical tools, allowed the preparation of the first noble metal-free catalytic materials for H" /H2 evolution working in both directions and without overpotential requirement. However, the current densities displayed by these materials are in the 1-lOmA/cm range, depending on temperature, while that of Pt-based active layers currentiy developed for electrolyzers and fuel cells exceed 1 A/cm. There is thus still room for improvement Both the optimization of the turnover frequency of the molecular catalysts and the increase of the catalyst loading within the tridimensional architecture of the electrode will allow improving the performances of such bio-inspired materials. 

The third and last section of our book deals with polymeric materials with bio-inspired functionality. The opening chapter by Waite gives a biological perspective of how mussels adhere to interfaces and emphasizes the importance of first understanding the biology before new, tmly bio-inspired materials can be achieved. The second chapter in this section, written by Lee, describes the synthetic achievements of mussel glue-inspired polymers, and depicts the polymer chemist s approach to mimic the mussel adhesion described by Waite in the previous chapter. Bruns and co-authors present a chapter on self-reporting polymeric materials with mechanochromic properties. Such materials mimic nature s ability to report, repair, and improve... 

SD and AFMK would like to acknowledge the Swiss National Science Foundation, MB and AFMK would like to acknowledge the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Bio Inspired Materials for financial support. 

It has been shown in various studies that biological materials can reach impressive architectures and mechanical properties by smart hierarchical assembly and interface design/ Yet, examples of successful transfer of the principles underlying such natural architectures into bio-inspired materials are still rather scarce. Designing materials that combine stiffness, toughness, and strength, as well as reach reasonable dimensions as one can find in nature, is still one of the major challenges in materials science and... 

A.R.S. thanks the finaneial support of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Researeh (NCCR) Bio-Inspired Materials. I.B. thanks BAFU and Lignum, Switzerland for financial support of the Wood Materials Science group. 

Semino CE. Self-assembling peptides from bio-inspired materials to bone regeneration. JDent Res 2008 87 606-616. 

Integration of applied math and computer science to obtain more powerful software tools for the chemical sciences and engineering, modeling the origin and development of life, alternative chemical bases for life (other worlds), computational disease modeling, design of bio-inspired materials, global climate control... 

Shaping engineered materials allows one to approach the domain covered by natural or bio materials as illustrated in Figure 2.14. In fact, bio-inspired materials have become an important field of research (so-called biomimetic materials) since great gains in performance are expected. 

Liu, K., Du,J.,Wu,J.,Jiang, L., 2012. Superhydrophobic gecko feet with high adhesive forces towards water and their bio-inspired materials. Nanoscale 4,768. 

Bio-inspired materials influencing cellular response and microorganisms... 

Kim, H.-D., Peyton, S.R., 2012. Bio-inspired materials for parsing matrix physicochemical control of cell migration a review. Integr. Biol. 4, 37. http //dx.doi.oig/10.1039/clib00069a. 

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