Bio-inspired and bio-integrated photonic materials and devices: feature issue introduction

Photonic Materials and Devices

Our recent advances in solid-state optoelectronic materials and devices will be reviewed. In the area of glass optics, fabrication of novel microstructured and multi-core fibers and their use in realizing single mode lasers will be summarized. In organic and plastic optics, photorefractive polymers for 3D display applications and nonlinear optical polymers for high speed modulators in RF photon...

Bio-Inspired Photonic Structures: Prototypes, Fabrications and Devices

Tough, bio-inspired hybrid materials.

The notion of mimicking natural structures in the synthesis of new structural materials has generated enormous interest but has yielded few practical advances. Natural composites achieve strength and toughness through complex hierarchical designs that are extremely difficult to replicate synthetically. We emulate nature's toughening mechanisms by combining two ordinary compounds, aluminum oxide...

Bio-inspired materials: unnatural life.

A t the turn of the nineteenth century, Pieter Harting and George Rainey laid the foundations of a science called “synthetic morphology”1. The inspiration for the name probably came from Wöhler’s discovery of urea synthesis in 1828, a breakthrough commonly perceived to mark the beginning of synthetic organic chemistry. The primary goal of Harting and Rainey’s synthetic morphology was to explain...

Bio-Inspired Self-Actuating Composite Materials