From macro to micro: structural biomimetic materials by electrospinning

Abstract

Bionics provides a model for preparation of structural materials. Recently, the preparation of biomimetic materials has become an increasingly hot research topic. As an increasingly popular method for the fabricating micro/nano materials, electrospinning has been providing various products with controllable compositions and structures, therefore offering excellent prospects for construction of biomimetic structures. This review briefly described some artificial biomimetic structures, which mimic living organisms with multilevel hierarchical structures from macro to micro, including plant-based soft tissue bio-materials, animal-based soft tissue bio-materials and animal-based hard tissue bio-materials, such as lotus leaf, moth eye, and bone, and related special functional properties, especially those fabricated via electrospinning. Moreover, the challenges in this field in the future, such as accurately analyzing about the structures of biomimetic materials, and designing composite functional or function-integrated materials have also been proposed.