Laser engineering of biomimetic surfaces

Abstract

The exciting properties of micro-and nano-patterned surfaces found in natural species hide a virtually endless potential of technological ideas, opening new opportunities for innovation and exploitation in materials science and engineering. Due to the diversity of biomimetic surface functionalities, inspirations from natural surfaces are interesting for a broad range of applications in engineering, including phenomena of adhesion, friction, wear, lubrication, wetting phenomena, self-cleaning, antifouling, antibacterial phenomena, thermoregulation and optics. Lasers are increasingly proving to be promising tools for the precise and controlled structuring of materials at micro-and nano-scales. When ultrashort-pulsed lasers are used, the optimal interplay between laser and material parameters enables structuring down to the nanometer scale. Besides this, a unique aspect of laser processing technology is the possibility for material modifications at multiple (hierarchical) length scales, leading to the complex biomimetic micro-and nano-scale patterns, while adding a new dimension to structure optimization. This article reviews the current state of the art of laser processing methodologies, which are being used for the fabrication of bioinspired artificial surfaces to realize extraordinary wetting, optical, mechanical, and biological-active properties for numerous applications. The innovative aspect of laser functionalized biomimetic surfaces for a wide variety of current and future applications is particularly demonstrated and discussed. The article concludes with illustrating the wealth of arising possibilities and the number of new laser micro/nano fabrication approaches for obtaining complex high-resolution features, which prescribe a future where control of structures and subsequent functionalities are beyond our current imagination.

Quo Vadis LIPSS?—Recent and Future Trends on Laser-Induced Periodic Surface Structures

“…Up-to-date surveys on this topic are found in recent reviews articles [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Many applications are particularly inspired by nature and enable surface engineering through tailored biomimetic laser-generated surface structures, reviewed in [ 6 , 30 ].…”

“…Examples are dirt-repellent surfaces through the well-known lotus effect, anti-icing [ 57 , 58 ], the directional transport of liquids inspired by moisture-harvesting lizards [ 59 ] and bark bugs [ 60 ], antiadhesive surfaces inspired by cribellating spiders [ 61 ], or antibacterial [ 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 ], cell-repellent [ 68 ], and cell-stimulating/-adapting surfaces [ 69 , 70 , 71 ] for medical applications [ 72 ]. A detailed review of the laser engineering of biomimetic surfaces is provided in [ 6 ]. Combined processing strategies: Currently, several research groups are exploring the combination of LIPSS with additional surface treatment techniques—either “in situ” during the laser processing, or “ex situ” after the laser-processing.…”

“…Depending on the selected materials and specific irradiation conditions, the processing of LIPSS enables a large variety of various types of surface functionalization that become possible through different feature sizes, ranging between a few tens of nanometers up to several micrometers. This allows for addressing many applications in the fields of optics, electronics, fluidics, mechanical engineering, and medicine [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ].…”

Maxwell Meets Marangoni—A Review of Theories on Laser‐Induced Periodic Surface Structures

“…[5][6][7] In recent years, the focus of experimental research has increasingly shifted toward the application of the gained knowledge aiming on the generation of tailored LIPSS for the creation of functional surface properties. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14] From the beginning, the experimental work was accompanied by theoretical studies on LIPSS formation, which is why today a large variety of model approaches is available that discuss the origin of LIPSS from sometimes very different perspectives. The objective of the present review article is to provide a systematic and comprehensive overview of the available LIPSS theories along with their historical context (Section 2), starting from the very first "simple" (a,b) Reproduced with permission.…”

Bioinspired Superhydrophobic Surfaces via Laser-Structuring

“…The formation of the microstructures was ascribed to the cooperation of capillary waves and laser-induced etching (Vorobyev and Guo, 2013). With more explorations in this scheme, it has been found that fs laser direct-writing can induce four kinds of self-organized structures: ripples, microgrooves, microspikes, and hierarchical complex structures (Stratakis et al, 2020). These micro-nanostructures give rise to surface textures as well as hydrophobicity/superhydrophobicity, and morphologies are tunable by laser parameters such as laser fluence, pulse duration, and repetition rate (Vorobyev and Guo, 2013;Stratakis et al, 2020).…”