Electrospinning: A versatile strategy for mimicking natural creatures

Natural creatures have developed fascinating structures and properties through billions of years of evolution, which provide valuable sources of inspiration for the human being to prepare specific structural materials. The unique properties of creatures resulting from their special hierarchical structures have attracted increasing attention for the fabrication of biomimetic materials to realize various technological applications. As a simple and versatile strategy, the electrospinning technique holds great potential for fabricating biomimetic nanofibrous materials with large surface area, high porosity, and ease of surface functionalization. In this review, we summarized the recent progress in the design and fabrication of electrospun biomimetic nanofibrous materials inspired by natural creatures including lotus leaf, silver ragwort leaf, water strider leg, polar bear hair, spider web and honeycomb. In addition, the potential applications of the as-prepared electrospun biomimetic materials in self-cleaning, oil/water separation, air filtration, thermal insulation were systematically analyzed. Finally, we discussed the current challenges and future developments in the fabrication of electrospun biomimetic materials.

通过数十亿年的进化，自然生物已经开发出引人入胜的结构和特性，这为人类制备特定的结构材料提供了宝贵的灵感来源。由于其特殊的层级结构而产生的生物的独特特性，在仿生材料的制造以实现各种技术应用方面引起了越来越多的关注。作为一种简单而通用的策略，静电纺丝技术在制造具有大表面积，高孔隙率和易于表面功能化的仿生纳米纤维材料方面具有巨大的潜力。在这篇综述中，我们总结了电纺仿生纳米纤维材料在设计和制造方面的最新进展，这些材料受自然界的启发，包括荷叶，银豚草叶，水ider腿，北极熊毛，蜘蛛网和蜂窝。此外，系统分析了所制备的静电纺丝仿生材料在自清洁，油/水分离，空气过滤，隔热方面的潜在应用。最后，我们讨论了静电纺丝仿生材料制造中的当前挑战和未来发展。

Published: 2018

Journal ：COMPOSITES COMMUNICATIONS

Impact Factor：There is no data at this time

Paper link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2452213918301906