Biomimicry ranks high at a meeting this week of scientists, with presentation topics covering materials that behave like spider silk or mussel adhesive, structures resembling gecko feet and biominerals, and plastics made from renewable raw materials.

More than 130 scientists are meeting with BASF researchers at the Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (ISIS) for a scientific symposium on "Bio-inspired Materials for the Chemical Industry."

“Materials generated in the course of evolution in the biological world are a source of illustration, inspiration and stimulation for the development of new materials with novel properties by chemical research and industry. This is a most timely theme for a Symposium”, explains chemistry Nobel Prize winner Professor Jean-Marie Lehn, Director of ISIS.

Many natural systems with complex structures exhibit an astonishingly high level of adaptability, resistance and eco-efficiency. Such observations stimulate the creativity of the chemical industry in developing improved or fundamentally new materials. In these endeavors, interdisciplinary synergies arise between synthetic chemistry, material science and biology.

“Many exciting examples can be given to explain how we can use nature as a source of inspiration to develop intelligent solutions of high economic relevance”, says Dr. Stefan Marcinowski, Member of the Board of Executive Directors and Research Executive Director of BASF. “Learning from nature means understanding how chemistry, biology and physics interact in producing outstanding phenomena. Nature presents us with a vast number of possibilities. Their technical application is not just limited to agricultural products or pharmaceuticals. Especially outside these established domains there is still a huge potential for bio-inspired innovations, as our symposium impressively demonstrates.”

Innovations result on the one hand from a directed search for intelligent solutions to an existing problem. For example, consumers wish to have stain repellent surfaces that reduce cleaning effort and thereby also contribute to protecting the environment. With the leaf of a lotus plant, nature shows us what structural characteristics a surface has to have before physical forces provide precisely the desired stain repellent effect. BASF puts this knowledge to good use with the innovation Mincor®TXTT, a textile coating for fabrics used in making tents, awnings and sunshades.

But it also works the other way round: researchers can technically reproduce one of nature’s brilliant “inventions” and then search for an application beneficial to man. Scientists now understand why butterfly wings are resplendent with color although they contain no dye. Light scattering on highly organized surface structures produces the “color without dye” effect. A dye that works on this principle will never lose its color fastness. BASF researchers have succeeded in producing a flexible dispersion film that changes color when stretched because the defined distance between the polymer beads in the dispersion changes.