30 April 2019 : Special Issue of Bioinspired Materials From Living System to New Concepts in Materials Chemistry

Dear Colleagues,

Nature successfully employs inorganic solid-state materials (i.e., biominerals) and hierarchical composites as sensing elements, weapons, tools, or as shelters. Optimized over hundreds of millions of years under evolutionary pressure, these composites are exceptionally adopted to a set of specifications for which and under which they function. Made from mundane materials templated by scaffolds under ambient conditions, the exquisite hierarchical organization of these biominerals often enables multifunctionality. These terrific examples of biogenic materials serve us today as an unfathomable library of brilliant engineering solutions where the interplay between components overall length scales is critical. The hierarchical design—a hall mark of biogenic materials—creates emergent functionality not present in the individual constituents and, moreover, confers a distinctly increased functional density, i.e., less material is needed to provide the same performance. The latter aspect is of special importance in this day and age, as we face global warming and have to reveal new sustainable routes to energy saving and material production.

In this Special Issue, we address recent advancements in our understanding of the synthesis and properties of biogenic materials, along with current developments in our venture to transform our newly gained insights into novel approaches for materials design and synthesis. It is my pleasure to invite you to submit manuscripts for this Special Issue. Full papers, communications, and reviews are all welcome. Representative topics include but are not limited to: self-organization, (non)classical crystallization, biogenic ceramic materials, evolutionary testing and optimization, functionally graded materials and structure-property relationships of biogenic or bioinspired materials, be they of structured, graded, or composite design.

Prof. Dr. Stephan E. Wolf
Guest Editor

Keywords

bioinspired materials
biomimesis
nonclassical crystallization
structure genesis
emergence

Submission steps:
1. Register via our system https://susy.mdpi.com/ and login;

2. Click "Submit to Special Issue" at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/materials/special_issues/Bioinspired_Materials