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Technology & Innovation
Technology & Innovation
13
BEYOND SURFACES
Fall
16
12
When
Mother Nature
knows best
Successful model
It may be the world’s most versatile
coating. It insulates, cools, water-
proofs, and kills germs, and it blocks
the sun and enables your sense of
touch. But no one designed our skin.
Instead, over millions of years, skin
gradually changed to help humans
– and the animals that came before
us – adapt to the elements and thrive
in an ever-changing world.
by Mark Pearl
V
ersatile surfaces abound in plants and animals,
and they deliver extraordinary performance
tailored to the job at hand. Geckos use velcro-
like structures on their feet to walk up walls. Carni-
vorous pitcher plants coat their flowers with a ridged,
nectar-laden surface so slippery that insects slide
inside to their doom. Tooth enamel lets us crack a
walnut in our teeth and emerge with our smile intact.
“Interactions at the surface control life,” says Dr Alex
Dommann, a materials scientist who heads the ‘Materials
meet Life’ department at Empa, the Swiss
Federal Lab-
oratories for Materials Science and Technology. “And
nature’s strategies,” he says, “can inspire new surface
technologies beyond any yet invented.”
Special coatings can make materials last longer,
perform more effectively, or simply look better. Such
properties are so essential that an entire discipline of
surface engineering now provides critical support for the
aerospace, automotive, construction, power generation
and biomedical industries.