Bionanotechnology: Lessons from Nature for Better Material Properties

Abstract

For millions of years, nature has built hierarchically organized intricate systems with interesting material properties that synthetic materials often fail to replicate. With the advances in instrumentation for both characterization and manipulation in nano-scale, it has now become possible to comprehend the molecular mechanisms and structures behind that success and mimic them. Biomimicry should not be understood as a superficial imitation of the biological systems. It should rather be interpreted as the inspiration from the structure-function relationships observed in biological systems to construct new hierarchical structures with improved properties.