Biomimicry in Textiles - shaping the future
"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous", said the famous philosopher, Aristotle. Nature has been an inspiration to the art and design world since ages. Every thing of beauty in nature is designed with certain functionality and a purpose. The world around us is surrounded by nature that spurs and provokes ideas that exist and can be executed.
Biomimicry, like the name suggests means "to imitate life" literally. The word is derived from the Greek word "bios" and "mimesis" also known as biomimetics. It practices the use of the marvels of nature and its functioning for developing new innovative technology. Many innovative textile products have been engineered using biomimicry. One such product that was inspired from nature is Velcro, invented by George De Mestral, when one evening he took his dog for a walk, and noticed burrs stuck to his fur. Similarly there are many textile technologies that mock the works of nature to come up with novel products.
Adapting and using the fruits of biomimicry in textiles has given solutions to many problems. Self cleaning, self repair, energy conservation, drag reduction, dry adhesion, superhydrophobicity are a few solutions that provided by biomimicry. Bio-inspired textiles are a result of fabrics that have functional surfaces, structural colors, self-healing, and thermal insulation properties.
Keeping clothes and other textile materials self-cleaning and water repelling has been the quest for many textile engineers and researchers. Lotus is a plant that wards off water drops and while it rolls off collects all the dirt along with it. This is because like Lotus, many plants have two structures that make the water resisting behavior possible. These structures consist of micro level mound like epidermal cells that contain wax. These cells trap air when they come in contact with water, which helps creating a repelling surface. This creates a textile material that is superhydrophic; similar coatings need to be used. A company achieved the results by producing water resisting fabrics by silicon coating of two polyester fabrics.
Water repelling textile surfaces have other applications like anti-fogging, self-cleaning, and micro fluidics. They are used in outdoor clothing, carpets, and architectural fabrics. Similarly, another group of researchers for a company developed a textile fabric that adopted the functionality of duck feathers. Besides being water repellants, the feathers in the wings of a duck can also keep warm. A product is developed by emulating the structures of duck feathers on cotton and polyester fabrics; layering it with chitosan for surface roughness, and coating it with silicon.
Another bubbling research in biomimicry has been that of thermal insulation properties of a polar bear. The minute hairs in the fur of a polar bear are hollow with foam like substance in between. They act like fibre-optics transmitters, allowing the capture of incident sunlight and transferring heat to the black skin beneath. The application of the fibre optic transmitters' act like photonic crystals in textiles can be used to make thermal insulated fabrics.
Butterflies also make use of optical micro structures to exhibit their colorful wings. Mimicking the microstructure of butterfly wings to produce the structural colors in textiles was an attempt made by a company. Polyester or nylon is used to produce 60 laminated layers of nanometer dimension.
Some researchers have explored the swiftness with movements of sharks under water, and designed swim suits by studying the shark skin and further developing material that reduces friction caused by human skin, while swimming under water, which helps swim faster and smoothly.
Biomimicry has also inspired textile designing in many ways. For instance a group of researchers from Bristol have produced a fabric that imitates how a squid changes colors. The design lets the material to change colors instantaneously with the help of camouflaging substances. These materials can be used for making uniforms of military personnel and also be used for making apparels for the future. An alliance of designers has created a dress made up of wine. Living microbes that grow as a by-product, while making wine were fermented and are broken down into designs to create a garment.
From all the above intriguing ideas, it can be concluded that biomimicry in textiles can translate into designing solutions that are sustainable and developed in a way that cause the least environmental impact. Using biological concepts efforts are being made to make textile materials that are environment friendly, functional, and durable. Hence with replicating designs, the process also needs to be imitated to reduce our ecological footprint.
A complete understanding of nature and its processes can become concept generators and foster the application of biomimicry in textiles. The growth and possibilities in producing fabrics from biomimicry are ample since nature presents a plethora of properties that can be incorporated to shape the future of smart textiles. Textile technologists, fibre scientists, and textile manufacturers around the world are making attempts to make textile products inspired from nature into reality. "Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience", said Leonardo Da Vinci and biomimicry is an element of nature that is slowly being discovered and increasing its presence in the field of textiles.
References:
1. Typepad.com
2. Newclothmarketonline.com
3. Royalsocietypublishing.org
4. Blogspot.com
Image Courtesy:
1. Sustainabilityworkshop.autodesk.com
2. Ecouterre.com
3. Labs.blogs.com
