Bioinspired Material Approaches to Sensing

Bioinspired design is an engineering approach that involves working to understand the design principles and strategies employed by biology in order to benefit the development of engineered systems. From a materials perspective, biology offers an almost limitless source of novel approaches capable of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Advanced functional materials 2009-08, Vol.19 (16), p.2527-2544
Main Authors: McConney, Michael E., Anderson, Kyle D., Brott, Lawrence L., Naik, Rajesh R., Tsukruk, Vladimir V.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Araneae
bioinspired materials
biomimetics
biosensors
sensors
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Summary:Bioinspired design is an engineering approach that involves working to understand the design principles and strategies employed by biology in order to benefit the development of engineered systems. From a materials perspective, biology offers an almost limitless source of novel approaches capable of arousing innovation in every aspect of materials, including fabrication, design, and functionality. Here, recent and ongoing work on the study of bioinspired materials for sensing applications is presented. Work presented includes the study of fish flow receptor structures and the subsequent development of similar structures to improve flow sensor performance. The study of spider air‐flow receptors and the development of a spider‐inspired flexible hair is also discussed. Lastly, the development of flexible membrane based infrared sensors, highly influenced by the fire beetle, is presented, where a pneumatic mechanism and a thermal‐expansion stress‐mediated buckling‐based mechanism are investigated. Other areas that are discussed include novel biological signal filtering mechanisms and reciprocal benefits offered through applying the biology lessons to engineered systems. Nature provides materials science with a wealth of inspiration. Reported here are recent studies involving fish flow‐receptor structures, spider air‐flow receptors, fire‐beetle IR sensors and their engineered analogues (see the synthetic hair sensors in the image). The results demonstrate that the synergistic relationship of understanding the approaches of biology and applying them to engineered systems can yield drastic improvement in performance.
ISSN:1616-301X
1616-3028
DOI:10.1002/adfm.200900606