Biological materials are natural materials that are produced by living organisms.  Biological materials have developed to fit the purpose of living organisms and optimized for numerous years.

Wet-environment for biological materials has much common with the human body. Both systems are naturally saline, experience variation of control over fluid flow, fouling by flowing via macromolecules, and degradation of organics via cellular-level activities. These are just a few examples of matching biological and mechanical events both present in the human body and the wet environment. Understanding physics and chemistry of biomaterials in the wet-environments will provide the scientists useful insights for designing biomaterials for biomedical applications. Isolation and characterization of the load bearing precusors in biomaterials is a prerequisite for mimicking those materials. Therefore, we seek to understand the properties and performance of biological materials of living organisms in nature. Biophysical and biochemical properties of the biological materials have been investigated with various mechanical and biochemical techniques. The interfaces between the materials have been studied with Electron microscopes (SEM, TEM), X-rays (Synchrotron, XRD), Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), and Surface Forces Apparatus (SFA). we also aim to isolate, to produce, and to characterize of novel load bearing biomaterials from marine organisms and material properties of these biomaterials will be further investigated by collaborative research with materials and physics departments

Especially, intermolecular interactions between the materials interfaces play a pivot role for biological materials assembly. An apparatus most often used for direct measurements of the forces between two interfaces is the surface forces apparatus (SFA). The SFA is an instrument that measures the magnitude and distance of the intermolecular forces between two surfaces by approaching, retracting, or shearing from one another.

Biofouling is about of how living organisms in water attach to wet-substrates at different length and time scales. Anti-fouling is the process of removing the accumulation, or preventing their accumulation. Biocides containing Tributyltin (TBT) and Cupper had been widely used as anti-fouling agent but the international maritime community has recognized serious side-effects of the biocides and forbidden use of them as an anti-fouling agent. Therefore, new environmentally friendly and economical anti-fouling strategies should be developed. Recently, many research groups in the world try to invent an anti-fouling materials via bio-mimicking.

We seek to understand the fundamentals of biofouling and antifouling phenomena in nature and try to find unrevealed insights to design novel anti-fouling agent via biomimetic approaches.

The insights is going to be utilized in Ocean Macroalgal Afforestation (OMA), developments in antifouling paints for ships, and developments in antifouling coating for membrane filtrations.

Biomimetic approaches will help inspire new generations of building blocks and subsequent production of engineered materials. We seek to produce new intriguing organic building blocks for material fabrication by biotechnological methods. The building blocks can be assembled and tailored for fabricating materials of multifunctionality in many applications.

Specifically, natural polymers produced by living organisms such as cellulose, chitin, collagen, and the other load-bearing biomacromolecules, are the main interests of our research group to produce biodegradable plastic. We seek to manufacture eco-friendly & transient materials by using nano-polysaccharides such as nanocellulose and nanochitin to minimize “micro-plastic issues”