Natural materials are multifunctional. Consider the simple shell of a gastropod: it evolved to achieve balance during locomotion, protection against predation and dehydration, storage of mineral, anchoring structure for muscles… And what is fascinating is that all this is realised using 95% of calcium carbonate. As a comparison, the engineered equivalent of a mollusc shell would be chalk, a material with very low functionalities… The key difference between natural and most engineered materials is the intricate microstructures in which the building blocks (calcium carbonate in our example) are arranged. Developing the tools to translate these microstructures into engineered materials would allow us to better understand microstructure-properties relationships. Ultimately, this could create new sets of materials with unique combinations of properties.In this seminar, I will present the latest progress from our group on the fabrication of bioinspired microstructures for engineering and discuss the potential of those materials.
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