New Surfaces, - ‘Without’ Chemistry? Bioinspired Microtopographic Material Surfaces – and also, Why We Sent Them into Space

Living nature uses much less chemical diversity than we do in our technical systems, but achieves significant additional functionalities through evolutionarily optimized and extremely diverse surface microstructure morphologies. We should learn to apply such powerful additional degree of freedom for new kind of high performance. Our good news is - practically any microscopic surface structure has become possible through Direct Laser Interference Patterning (DLIP-Technology). Whether tribology or electrical resistance, antimicrobial properties, wetting or plagiarism protection - the variety of functionalization is really fascinating. The variety of pulsed lasers, from ns-pulses to extremely short fs pulses, makes all solid surfaces patternable, also with very high efficiency and technological speed of up to m²/min. DLIP is now a very versatile innovation platform for new high performance “metasurfaces” (www.surfunction.com). We will discuss examples of functionalization with significant effects, as well as the recent extensive experiments on antimicrobial material surfaces in the International Space Station, that NASA and ESA will use to support the health of astronauts on the ISS and, in the future, also on Moon and the Mars.