ABSTRACT

The term biomimetics-a portmanteau fabricated from the words biology and mimesis (imitation)—describes the transfer of insights resulting from fundamental biological research into technical applications. Biomimetics never represents a “blueprint from nature” but has to be thought of as a creative technological implementation, that is, a reinvention inspired by nature. Especially, over the last two decades, bio-inspired materials and technologies are becoming of increasing interest in many „elds of practical applications. The idea is to tap the huge reservoir of biological materials, structures, and process sequences evolved over 3.8 billion years for innovative technical applications. The long time span of evolution gave rise to many fascinating biological solutions that are often multifunctional and show a high degree of sustainability (Vincent, 2003; Speck et al., 2007). The fact that living organisms including humans share the same environment in which the same physical laws and constants are valid makes many of the sometimes surprising biological solutions interesting for technical applications, and allow new approaches to solve technical problems. Biological materials such as wood, bone, and shells, for example, are in contrast to man-made materials composed of only limited number of basic substances that are typically built of components (atoms, molecules) found in close neighborhood of the organisms. They gain their diversity in mechanical properties by hierarchical structuring and functionalizing of surfaces and interfaces on all length scales (Fratzl, 2007; Bhushan, 2009a). This allows them to ful„l and to combine a variety of mechanical and additional functions, for example, combining high stiffness and toughness, benign fracture behavior, self-healing, self-cleaning, self-adaptability, optical functions, and so on.