Bioinspired Materials Science: Mimicking Nature's Strategies to Build Functional Materials

Abstract

One of most fascinating features of biological system is that their excellent physical and chemical properties stem from their unique structure where various organic and inorganic components are precisely assembled at nanoscale precision. They have developed their own strategies to build functional materials and systems in response to external stimuli (or environment) through evolution over millions of years. For example, excellent mechanical properties of natural bone is resulted from their unique structure where organic peptide nanofibers and calcium phosphate nanocrystals are hierarchically organized at nano- and micro-scales. Another good example is photosynthetic machinery of plants, which can produce sugars and biological fuels with sustainable resources. Spatiotemporal arrangement of light-harvesting chlorophyl dyes and redox catalysts allows efficient separation of charges and directional flow of electrons (i.e. redox power), enabling photocatalytic splitting of water and production of carbohydrates from CO2. In this presentation, we report the development of functional materials and systems, especially for energy storage and conversion devices, by mimicking Mother Nature'ss stretegies. Following topics will be covered in this presentation: 1) Synthesis of functional materials by using biological templates such as peptides and viruses, 2) Development of artiticial photosynthetic system for the production of valuable chemicals.