Course Outcome 4 Lecture:

INTRODUCTION TO BIOMIMETICS
CONCEPTS

BIO20 Prof. UREAH THEA A. SEVILLA, Ph.D.

Introduction to Biomimetics Eng’g. and School of Chemical, Biological, and Materials Engineering
Component Design and Sciences

Recognize the basic concepts of biomimetics and

Course Outcome 4: component designs and enumerate existing technologies
derived or mimicked from nature.

Topic Outline:
• Biomimetic Structural and Functional Materials and Processing
• Biomineralization and Biomimetic Materials Processing

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Biomimetic Materials Science and Engineering
• Many of the most pressing scientific
problems that are currently faced
today are due to the limitations of the
materials that are currently available.
• The integration of biology, material
sciences, chemistry, and physics
together with nanotechnology and
information technology has brought
the subject of biomimetic materials to
the science and engineering frontier.

Two Aspects of Biomimetic Materials Science and

Engineering

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Biological Materials vs Engineering Materials

Structure and Function Properties in Nature

• Hierarchy
• Biological materials with different organized scale levels (nano to macro)
exhibit distinct and translatable properties from one level to the next. A
systematic and quantitative understanding of this hierarchy could provide a
new route to building more complex synthetic materials with desirable
properties and functions.
• Multi‐functionality
• While many synthetic materials are designed for one function, most biological
materials serve more than one purpose. For example, feathers provide flight
capability, camouflage, and insulation, whereas the coating on moth eyes
provides anti‐reflection, self‐cleaning, and protection functions.

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Structure and Function Properties in Nature
• Self‐healing capability
• Unlike synthetic materials in which damage and failure occur in an irreversible
manner, biological materials often have the capability to heal damage or injury
because of the vascular systems embedded in the structure.
• Evolution
• Biological structures are not necessarily optimized for all properties but are the
result of an evolutionary process leading to satisfactory and robust solutions.
“Living” materials (e.g., bone) have evolved in response to their environments during
their lifetime.
• Environmental constraints
• Biological materials are limited in the elements they are composed of (e.g., C, H, O,
N, Fe, etc.) and the availability of these elements dictates the morphology,
properties, and functions of the materials.

Classes of Biomimetic Materials

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Biomimetic Structural Materials and Processing
SPIDER SILK
• In particular, spider silk is of practical
interest in engineering applications for its
unique combination of high strength and
rupture elongation. It is incredibly tough
and remains unbroken after being
stretched to two to four times its original
length.

There are at least two distinctive types:

frame silk or rigid type, and the spiral silk.

Biomimetic Structural Materials: Spider Silk

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Biomimetic Structural Materials: Spider Silk
• Dragline silk, have exceptional mechanical properties.
• They exhibit a unique combination of high tensile strength and
extensibility (ductility). This enables a silk fibre to absorb a large
amount of energy before breaking (toughness, the area under a
stress-strain curve).

Biomimetic Structural Materials: Spider Silk

• Spider Silk

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Biomimetic Structural Materials: Spider Silk
• Spider silk fibers are natural polymeric composites with a hierarchical
structure.

Strong and Tough Engineering Materials and

Processes Mimicking Spider Silk
• Bioinspired Carbon Nanotube Yarns Mimicking Spider Silk Structure
• To mimic the microstructure and toughening mechanism of spider
silk, the nanotubes can be integrated into macroscopic composites
with silk‐like microstructures with a high degree of nanotube
alignment.
• Addition of PVA mediates a dense network of hydrogen bonds
between the CNT bundles, provides high stiffness, strength, and
energy to failure to macroscopic nanotube‐based yarns.

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Strong and Tough Engineering Materials and
Processes Mimicking Spider Silk
• Chemical vapor deposition (CVD)‐grown high‐quality single‐walled or
double‐walled carbon nanotubes are functionalized with short
polymer chains possessing carboxylic acid and ester functional
groups; and then are spun into composite fibers with PVA.

Biomimetic Structural Materials: Nacre

• Nacre is one of the most appealing hard tissues in biomimicry
because of its exceptional mechanical properties, especially
toughness.

Nacre exists in the inner layer of the

structure of some shells that protect
the soft body of the mollusk against
attack from predators, debris, and
rocks moved by the current.

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Biomimetic Structural Materials: Nacre

Biomimetic Structural Materials: Nacre

• The characteristic structure of nacre at the microscale is a
composite made of “brick and mortar”, which is composed of
95% mineral calcium carbonate (CaCO3) in the aragonite form.
• The remaining 5% of nacre is sheets of organic matrix
composed of elastic biopolymers (such as chitin, lustrin, silk‐like
proteins, and polysaccharides) mostly located at the interface
between platelets.

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Biomimetic Structural Materials: Nacre
• The balance of strength and toughness in nacre is comparable to that
of metals and polymers.

The non‐elastic deformation and relatively large strains in hydrated nacre stem mainly
from its unique platelet‐layered structure and polymer interface.

• Strengthening/Toughening
Mechanisms in Other Hard
Tissues

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Biomimetic Structural Materials: Bones
• Bone is a typical biological material with an excellent balance of
strength, stiffness, toughness, and light weight.
• Skeletal bone is composed of hierarchical assemblies of tropocollagen
molecules, tiny hydroxyapatite crystals and water.
• Bones: ~33–43 vol% minerals, 32–44 vol% organics, and 15–25 vol%
water.

Biomimetic Structural Materials:

Bones
• The strength and toughness of bone
strongly depend on the interplay
between different structural levels –
from the molecular/nanoscale
interaction between crystallites of
calcium phosphate and an organic
framework, through the
micrometer‐scale assembly of
collagen fibrils, to the millimeter‐level
organization of lamellar bone.

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Biomimetic Design Principles for Strong and Tough
Materials
• A good balance of strength and toughness is achieved by activating
various toughening mechanisms at different length scales. These
high‐performance materials designed by nature provide a spectrum
of materials design blueprints for advanced engineering materials.

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Strong and Tough Engineering Materials and
Processes Mimicking Nacre
• A high‐performance nacre‐like platelet‐reinforced polymer composite
has been developed by replicating the biological design principle of
layered composites.

Similar to nacre, the mechanical behavior of the biomimetic layered alumina platelet/polymer
composites strongly deviated from the linear elastic regime, when the yield tensile strength of the
organic matrix was reached.

Strong and Tough Engineering Materials and

Processes Mimicking Nacre
• The layered hybrid materials were fabricated by layer‐by‐layer assembly that sequentially
deposits inorganic and organic layers at ambient conditions:
• Ultrasonication of smooth and perfectly oriented monolayer of platelets was formed at the
surface of water
• The two‐dimensional assembled platelets were transferred to a glass substrate by dip‐coating
and were then spin‐coated with an organic layer of chitosan solution.
• Repetition of these steps in a sequential manner led to multilayered inorganic–organic films with
a total thickness typically less than a few tens of a micrometer.

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Strong and Tough Engineering Materials and
Processes Mimicking Nacre
• Inspired by the nacre structure, researchers fabricated nacre‐like
ceramic materials with five structural features, spanning several
length scales:

The microstructure of the resulting synthetic material is very similar to that of natural nacre at
several length scales; almost all the characteristic features of nacre can be found in the synthetic
materials.

Supplemental Reading Materials

• Yayun Wang, Steven E. Naleway, Bin Wang (2020). Biological and bioinspired
materials: Structure leading to functional and mechanical performance, Bioactive
Materials, Volume 5, Issue 4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bioactmat.2020.06.003

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Supplemental Reading Materials
• Moheb Sabry Aziz, Amr Y. El sheriff. (2016). Biomimicry as an approach for bio-
inspired structure with the aid of computation, Alexandria Engineering Journal,
Volume 55, Issue 1, Pages 707-714.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1110016815001702)

References
• Zhenhai Xia. Biomimetic Principles and Design of Advanced
Engineering Materials, Wiley. 2012.
• Maibritt Pedersen Zari. Biomimetic Approaches, SB07. Victoria
University, New Zealand.
• Harun Yahya (2006). BIOMIMETICS: Technology Imitates Nature.
Global Publishing, Turkey.

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