On the Materials Science of Nature's Arms Race

Abstract

Biological material systems have evolved unique combinations of mechanical properties to fulfill their specific function through a series of ingenious designs. Seeking lessons from Nature by replicating the underlying principles of such biological materials offers new promise for creating unique combinations of properties in man-made systems. One case in point is Nature's means of attack and defense. During the long-term evolutionary "arms race," naturally evolved weapons have achieved exceptional mechanical efficiency with a synergy of effective offense and persistence-two characteristics that often tend to be mutually exclusive in many synthetic systems-which may present a notable source of new materials science knowledge and inspiration. This review categorizes Nature's weapons into ten distinct groups, and discusses the unique structural and mechanical designs of each group by taking representative systems as examples. The approach described is to extract the common principles underlying such designs that could be translated into man-made materials. Further, recent advances in replicating the design principles of natural weapons at differing lengthscales in artificial materials, devices and tools to tackle practical problems are revisited, and the challenges associated with biological and bioinspired materials research in terms of both processing and properties are discussed.

Structural Orientation and Anisotropy in Biological Materials: Functional Designs and Mechanics

“…Typical examples of such macrotissues include the naturally evolved weapons that are primarily used for fighting or feeding, e.g., the tusks of walrus and wild boar, the horns of yak and beetle, lobster claw, spider fang, and worm jaw (Figure 9a). [33,34,164,[182][183][184][185][186] These tissues necessitate an effective protection to themselves while maximizing the offence and damage exerted to opponents. A common feature is that they often exhibit curved shapes with their long axes gradually deviated away from external load from tip to base-the load is generally along the tangential direction at tip.…”

Biocatalytic Protein‐Based Materials for Integration into Energy Devices

“…Extensive efforts are currently being made in the fabrication of new functional biomaterials and their integration into technological devices . A variety of bioinspired strategies have recently emerged to create biomaterials with tailored functionalities, improved properties, and potential applications .…”

“…Extensive efforts are currently being made in the fabrication of new functional biomaterials and their integration into technological devices . A variety of bioinspired strategies have recently emerged to create biomaterials with tailored functionalities, improved properties, and potential applications . These strategies include bottom‐up approaches for the generation of supramolecular biomaterials, with particular efforts devoted to protein‐based materials due to the amazing structural and functional diversity of these biomolecules …”

Convergent evolution inspired serrated structure for improving efficiency of soil imprinting and its mechanism investigation

“…Yet, the exploration of geometrical shapes of soil burrowing animals' claw represents almost an unlimited task in view of nature's endless biodiversity. However, fresh lessons can also be generated by re examining already known systems, particularly with regard to the notion of convergent evolution in nature [20] . Therefore, during the long-term evolutionary process, similar solutions arise among different animal species, signifying some degree of convergent evolution.…”