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Biomimetics
Special Issues
Learning From Nature: Biomimetic Materials and Devices
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Learning From Nature: Biomimetic Materials and Devices

A special issue of Biomimetics (ISSN 2313-7673).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 August 2026 | Viewed by 716

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Zhengxing Li

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Interests: micro/nanorobotics; drug delivery; nanomedicine; bio-inspired materials; intelligent controllable systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Shichao Ding

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou 310024, China
Interests: wearable electronics; biosensors; autonomous devices; flexible materials; energy systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nature represents the ultimate model of efficiency, adaptability, and multifunctionality. Over billions of years, biological systems have evolved optimized structures and mechanisms that seamlessly integrate form and function. Drawing inspiration from these natural paradigms, biomimetic materials and devices have emerged as a transformative frontier in materials science and engineering, offering innovative strategies to address challenges in healthcare, energy, environmental sustainability, and soft electronics.

In this Special Issue, Learning From Nature: Biomimetic Materials and Devices, the aim is to highlight recent advances in the design, synthesis, and application of nature-inspired materials and systems. We welcome contributions that explore how biological principles, such as hierarchical structuring, self-assembly, adaptability, and self-healing, can be translated into synthetic materials and functional devices. Topics of interest include biomimetic surfaces and coatings, adaptive and self-responsive materials, bioinspired mechanical and optical systems, and multifunctional devices for sensing, actuation, and energy conversion.

Moreover, we particularly encourage papers from interdisciplinary studies that bridge materials science, physics, chemistry, and biology to create systems with enhanced performance or new functionalities. By integrating insights from natural design into advanced engineering, this Special Issue seeks to advance the development of intelligent, sustainable, and high-performance materials and devices that redefine the boundaries between the living and the artificial.

Dr. Zhengxing Li
Dr. Shichao Ding
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biomimetics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • biomimetic materials
  • bioinspired design
  • self-healing systems
  • intelligent materials
  • functional devices
  • adaptive materials
  • sustainable engineering

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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31 pages, 4943 KB  
Article
Bio-Inspired Flexible-Wall Squeezing Mixer with ALE-CFD-Based Actuation Optimization and Fluorescence-Imaging Assessment of Outlet Mixing Uniformity
by Wen Yuan and Zhihong Zhang
Biomimetics 2026, 11(4), 284; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics11040284 - 20 Apr 2026
Viewed by 415
Abstract
Efficient mixing is a persistent bottleneck in agricultural and agrochemical processing, where rapid and uniform mixing must be achieved under laminar flow with low energy input and gentle shear. Inspired by peristaltic transport in biological systems, this study investigates a bio-inspired flexible-wall squeezing [...] Read more.
Efficient mixing is a persistent bottleneck in agricultural and agrochemical processing, where rapid and uniform mixing must be achieved under laminar flow with low energy input and gentle shear. Inspired by peristaltic transport in biological systems, this study investigates a bio-inspired flexible-wall squeezing mixer and establishes a two-dimensional computational framework to quantify how periodic wall deformation governs scalar homogenization in a flexible conduit. An Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian dynamic mesh approach is implemented to resolve moving boundaries and to prescribe actuation, enabling the systematic evaluation of the separate and coupled effects of peak wall-normal velocity amplitude A and actuation frequency f on mixing performance. Mixing effectiveness is quantified using a variance-based mixing index MI and a sustained-threshold mixing time ts, and response surface methodology is employed to map the A–f design space and interpret the roles of time-dependent shear, interfacial stretching and folding, and vortex intensification. Relative to a non-actuated baseline, a peak wall-normal velocity amplitude of 3 × 10−3 m s−1 at 2 Hz reduces ts by 21.3%. At fixed f = 3 Hz, increasing A from 1 × 10−3 to 4 × 10−3 m s−1 shortens ts by 10.2%, while at fixed A = 3 × 10−3 m s−1, raising f from 1 to 5 Hz further decreases ts by 6.6% with diminishing gains at the lowest frequencies. The response surface identifies an operating optimum at A = 4 × 10−3 m s−1 and f = 5 Hz, achieving a peak MI of 0.9557 and a minimum ts of 7.81 s. A periodically squeezed physical mixing loop was further examined using fluorescence imaging to assess outlet homogeneity trends. The stabilized outlet coefficient of variation (CV) decreased from about 0.65 without squeezing to 0.60 at 1 Hz and 10 mm s−1, 0.58 at 2 Hz and 10 mm s−1, and 0.54 at 2 Hz and 30 mm s−1, indicating that stronger and faster actuation improves outlet uniformity. The numerical and experimental results are therefore interpreted jointly as mechanistic and trend-level evidence, while a rigorous quantitative prediction for the cylindrical compliant device will require future three-dimensional, compliance-resolved simulations and broader experimental benchmarking. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Learning From Nature: Biomimetic Materials and Devices)
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