Insect wings have nanometer-size structure that give them interesting properties – including being antibacterial. A team of Australian and Japanese researchers have figured out how to apply this property to plastic, paving the way for antibiotic-free antibacterial food containers.
The research leans on a decade of bio-inspired research on self-cleaning surfaces. Researchers have known for a while that plenty of living organisms have micro- and nano-structures that deflect bacteria.
“Lotus leaves are famous for their self-cleaning properties,” says Distinguished Professor Elena Ivanova, a researcher at RMIT University.
Other research at RMIT has focused on water-repelling (hydrophobic) lotus leaves, which have also inspired self-cleaning plastic.
But Ivanova says that specifically for antibacterial purposes, the lotus leaf model “is not as promising”.
“We’re looking at other examples of bacteria-free surfaces in nature,” she adds.
Insect wings, also hydrophobic, have similar surfaces to lotus leaves. At the nanoscale, both are very rough: covered in bumps about ten thousand times smaller than a millimetre.
The researchers examined cicada and dragonfly wings. These wings have “nanopillars”: blunt spikes, between about a 100th and a 10th the size of bacterial cells. The researchers thought that these nanopillars, like lotus leaf surfaces, would be hydrophobic enough to clean bacteria off….ReadMore