Bio-inspired functional surfaces for advanced applications

Over millions of years, biological subjects have been in continuous combat with extreme environmental conditions. The fittest have survived through continuous evolution, an ongoing process. In particular, biological surfaces, which are the active interfaces between subjects and the environment, are being evolved to a higher state of intelligent functionality. These surfaces became more efficient by using combinations of available materials, along with unique physical and chemical strategies. Noteworthy physical strategies include features such as texturing and structure, and chemical strategies such as sensing and actuation. These strategies collectively enable functional surfaces to deliver extraordinary adhesion, hydrophobicity, multispectral response, energy scavenging, thermal regulation, antibiofouling, and other advanced functions. Production industries have been intrigued with such biological surface strategies in order to learn clever surface architectures and implement those architectures to impart advanced functionalities into manufactured consumer products. This keynote paper delivers a critical review of such inspiring biological surfaces and their nonbiological product analogs, where manufacturing science and engineering have adopted such advanced functional surface architectures.