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Chitin is one of the most abundant biomaterials in nature, with 10^10 tons produced annually as hierarchically organized nanofibril fillers to reinforce the exoskeletons of arthropods. This green and cheap biomaterial has attracted great…
Synthetic bio-molecular spiders with "legs" made of single-stranded segments of DNA can move on a surface covered by single-stranded segments of DNA called substrates when the substrate DNA is complementary to the leg DNA. If the motion of…
Spiders' webs and gossamer threads are often paraded as paradigms for lightweight structures and outstanding polymers. Probably the most intriguing of all spider silks is the araneid capture thread, covered with tiny glycoprotein glue…
Artificial nanowalkers are inspired by biomolecular counterparts from living cells, but remain far from comparable to the latter in design principles. The walkers reported to date mostly rely on chemical mechanisms to gain a direction; they…
Biological muscles have always attracted robotics researchers due to their efficient capabilities in compliance, force generation, and mechanical work. Many groups are working on the development of artificial muscles, however,…
Spider silk possesses unique mechanical properties like large extensibility, high tensile strength, super-contractility, etc. Understanding these mechanical responses require characterization of the rheological properties of silk beyond the…
Insects like dragonflies and cicadas possess nanoprotusions on their wings that rupture bacterial membranes upon contact, inspiring synthetic antibacterial surfaces mimicking this phenomenon. Designing such biomimetic surfaces requires…
Molecular spiders are synthetic molecular motors based on DNA nanotechnology. While natural molecular motors have evolved towards very high efficiency, it remains a major challenge to develop efficient designs for man-made molecular motors.…
Natural hard composites like human bone possess a combination of strength and toughness that exceeds that of their constituents and of many engineered composites. This augmentation is attributed to their complex hierarchical structure,…
When humidified at different moisture conditions, restrained spider silk fibers can exhibit a very high supercontraction phenomenon. The hydration water molecules induce a Hydrogen-bonds disruption process that, due to entropic effects,…
While most of the studies on molecular machines have been performed in solution, interfacing these supramolecular systems with solid-state nanostructures and materials is very important in view of their utilization in sensing components…
Rigorous understanding of the self-assembly of colloidal nanocrystals is crucial to the development of tailored nanostructured materials. Despite extensive studies, a mechanistic understanding of self-assembly under non-equilibrium driven…
We use numerical simulations to show how noninteracting hard particles binding to a deformable elastic shell may self-assemble into a variety of linear patterns. This is a result of the nontrivial elastic response to deformations of shells.…
Molecular spiders are synthetic bio-molecular systems which have "legs" made of short single-stranded segments of DNA. Spiders move on a surface covered with single-stranded DNA segments complementary to legs. Different mappings are…
Intricate biomineralization processes in molluscs engineer hierarchical structures with meso-, nano-, and atomic architectures that give the final composite material exceptional mechanical strength and optical iridescence on the macroscale.…
Fabrication of highly ordered and dense nanofibers assemblies is of key importance in designing high-performance and multi-functional materials. In this work, we design an experimental approach in silico, combining shear flow and solvent…
Nature offers a remarkable diversity of nanomaterials that have extraordinary functional and structural properties. Intrinsic to nature is the impressive ability to form complex ordered nanomaterials via self-organization. One particularly…
Biological materials achieve directional reinforcement with oriented assemblies of anisotropic building blocks. One such example is the nanocomposite structure of keratinized epithelium on the toe pad of tree frogs, in which hexagonal…
On garment intelligence influenced by artificial neural networks and neuromorphic computing is emerging as a research direction in the e-textile sector. In particular, bio inspired Spiking Neural Networks mimicking the workings of the brain…
The properties of polymeric nanofibers can be tailored and enhanced by properly managing the structure of the polymeric molecules at the nanoscale. Although electrospun polymer fibers are increasingly exploited in many technological…