Advanced bio-inspired structural materials: Local properties determine overall performance

Abstract Natural materials have always attracted intensive attention from multidisciplinary scientists all over the world. In fact, the ingenious and reasonable synthetic strategies of the limited components can always make natural materials achieve a superior performance that is far beyond their own. Meanwhile, the local properties can determine the overall performance through regulating multiple characteristics, including structure, composition, and interface. Living organisms can inspire the fabrication of artificial materials, which provides a clear vision for advanced materials research. Therefore, inspired by this strategy, biomimetic structural materials are used to meet the strict and even extreme requirements of engineering materials. In this review, we mainly clarify the difference of local properties in natural materials and explain how living organisms utilize very limited elements and compounds to control the local properties and further realize some specific function to adapt to the specific requirement of the environment. In addition, the manufacturing technologies and strategies common to bio-inspired structural materials are summarized. Finally, a summary and prospects on the limitations of current techniques and the direction of future developments for the design of novel bio-inspired materials are given.

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