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Nature’s had a few billion years to do what it does best.
So it only makes sense that we humans would want to take advantage
of some of its greatest hits.
Taking inspiration from or mimicking structures found in nature is called biomimicry.
And we do it a lot — for making things like waterproof glues or wind turbine blades.
But there’s another area that draws inspiration from nature
that doesn’t get as much credit: fashion.
Take dyeing fabrics, for example.
Thanks to the chemicals found in many commercial dyes,
making a shirt a radiant shade of red can be toxic
to both the people dyeing the fabric and to the environment.
But some of the most vibrant colors in nature don’t come from pigments at all.
They come from the structure of the material.
For instance, the morpho butterfly has these vibrantly colored wings.
The iridescent blue color comes from microscopic, shingle-like scales that
scatter certain wavelengths of light, reflecting blue back to our eyes.
And two fabric manufacturers have mimicked that structure
to create some stunning textiles.
Japanese fiber manufacturer Kuraray created Diphorl:
a fabric made by spinning two types of polyester together,
and then heat treating them to make twists in the yarn.
Those twists sit in different horizontal and vertical directions,
absorbing and reflecting light in a similar way to the morpho wing.
Instant color, no dye required.
And another Japanese company, Teijin,
has taken the morpho wing idea one step further with a fabric called Morphotex.
This fabric is constructed from 61 super thin layers of polyester or nylon.
And each layer is only around 70 nanometers thick.
By controlling the thickness of each layer,
researchers can change the wavelength of light that’s reflected:
either red, green, blue or violet.
But sometimes you want function from your fashion, not just form.
Like, wouldn’t it be great to be able to wear a thin jacket in the depths of winter,
instead of being swallowed up in a puffer jacket the size of a tent?
Well, polar bears might have the solution. They are experts in staying warm, after all.
And that’s thanks to a double-layered coat.
Close to the skin is a layer of short, dense hairs
and outside of that is a set of longer guard hairs.
Those long hairs are hollow, which makes them excellent at absorbing heat.
So instead of heat from the polar bear’s body seeping out into the cold Arctic air,
it’s absorbed by the hairs, keeping the bear warm.
In fact, the heat is trapped so effectively that polar bears
are practically invisible on infrared cameras.
In 2018, Chinese scientists developed a technique for making fibers
with a similar structure to polar bear guard hairs.
The fibers are packed with tiny pores,
making them basically hollow and able to trap heat much like the guard hairs do.
But then, these scientists upped the ante.
They showed they could improve the fibers by adding carbon nanotubes,
along with a power source.
These super thin, flexible strands can be woven into the polar-bear-like fibers.
And a battery could heat the nanotubes quickly and transfer heat easily to the fibers,
basically turning your sweater into a portable, wearable heater.
Aside from keeping you toasty warm, researchers think clothes
made from these fibers could almost act like an invisibility cloak,
letting people evade infrared cameras like polar bears do.
And finally, we’ve all got that favorite shirt.
You know, the one that’s full of holes you’ve had forever
and you just can’t bear to throw it away.
It would be pretty cool if that shirt could repair itself
so you wouldn’t have to buy another one for years, or maybe even decades.
Well it turns out, researchers are working on
a coating you can put on fabric that would do just that.
First described in a 2016 paper, the coating takes its inspiration from squid.
You see, squid have sets of tough, serrated suckers called squid ring teeth
that they use for latching onto things.
Those teeth contain proteins that have a unique nanostructure of repeating units:
some soft and wiggly, and some rigid.
Kind of like beads on a string, but at a molecular scale.
And it’s this structure — along with some added heat and pressure —
that allows the coating to heal itself.
In squid, the protein structure gives the teeth
extreme strength and flexibility for grasping onto prey.
When two proteins draw close to each other,
the rigid parts attract each other and stick together.
The wiggly parts in between allow them to line up in a neat array.
If coated on a piece of fabric, the researchers say,
the proteins can join frayed parts back together.
And incidentally, while many self-healing coatings don’t work when wet,
this one has to be wet to work.
Not only did the researchers show that fabrics including cotton, linen, and wool
could heal themselves in this way — they could be self-cleaning, too.
They found that adding enzymes to the squid-based coating
meant it could break down chemicals that were applied to the fabric.
That would be great not only for vintage t-shirt lovers,
but for workers whose uniforms need to withstand abrasions or chemical spills.
But right now the best place to get squid ring proteins is from squid.
Scientists have been able to get genetically modified bacteria to make the proteins,
but they just can’t pump them out in the same amounts as a squid does.
Which is kind of crucial if you’re talking about
manufacturing clothing on a larger scale.
So, fashion and function — nature just has it all.
So you can hardly blame us for wanting to borrow some of its best moves.
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow.
If you enjoyed it, you’ll probably also enjoy our podcast, SciShow Tangents.
In October, we did a Month of Monsters, where we talked about real science inspired
by supernatural creatures like ghosts and Frankenstein’s monster,
and we’ve got more holiday-themed surprises coming in December,
so keep an eye out for that!
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