Antiadhesive bionic combs for handling of nanofibers
Elmarco has joined the BioCombs4Nanofibers project. The vision of the project is to adapt and convert the biological nanostructures into a technical process to create future tools and devices with controlled antiadhesive properties to handle and process nanofibers.
To overcome the major problem for handling of nanofibers, namely their stickiness to almost any surface, we propose here to get inspiration from cribellate spiders. They bear a specialized comb-like tool, the calamistrum, to handle and process nanofibers. Their 10 – 30 nm thick fibers, used as adhesive to capture prey, do not stick to the calamistrum due to a special fingerprint-like nanostructure covering the surface of the comb.
In BioCombs4Nanofibers we will demonstrate the radically new technology by implementing advanced laser-induced nanostructures to mimic the fingerprint-nanostructures of cribellate spiders with a periodicity between 100 and 200 nm.
Partners of the project:
- JKU - Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Austria
- RWTH - Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, Germany
- FORTH - Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Greece
- BAM - Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung, Germany
- INFLPR - National Institute for Laser, Plasma & Radiation Physics, Romania
- ELM - Elmarco, Czech Republic
The BioCombs4Nanofibers project is supported by EU Horizon 2020, FET-Open Challenging Current Thinking.