Nanofibers, with beneficial surface-to-used-material-ratio, are constantly drawing the attention of material scientists and engineers as their usage could solve many challenging issues ranging from air and liquid filtration to antiseptic areas on medical devices. However, technical nanofiber processing, transportation or even simple things as spooling is inhibited by their attraction to any surface by van der Waals forces (i.e., interaction between electrical dipoles), the adhesive forces also enabling geckos to stick to the wall. Numerous publications describe applications of nanofibers achieved via single-needle electrospinning on a lab-scale. Recent research aims mainly for facilitating the scale-up of nanofiber production for instance by needle-free or multi-needle electrospinning approaches.1 However, except for the design of the spinnerets,2 the necessity of tools interacting with the nanofibers really on a nanoscale is widely ignored. This is one of the main reasons that the application fields are still quite limited. To overcome the major problem for handling of nanofibers, namely their stickiness to almost any surface, we propose here to get inspiration from cribellate spiders.

The vision of BioCombs4Nanofibers is to adapt and convert the biological nanostructures into a technical process to create future tools and devices with controlled antiadhesive and antimicrobiotic properties. In BioCombs4Nanofibers we will demonstrate the radically new technology by implementing advanced laser induced nanostructures to mimic the fingerprint-nanostructures of cribellate spiders with a periodicity between 100 and 200 nm. The technical surfaces will be polymers, metals, semiconductors and glasses enabling a wide range of applications. As similar nanostructures can hinder the adhesion of nanofibrous cell protrusions or bacterial pili, they will finally enable cell-repellent and/or antiseptic areas on medical devices and implants - an application area with a huge impact.

In brief, BioCombs4Nanofibers will contribute towards a radically new technology “nanofiber handling” leading to a change of the paradigm by focusing on tools and devices to control nanofibers rather than on scale-up of nanofiber production:

• developing antiadhesive nanostructures inspired by combs of cribellate spiders

• adapting broad range of nanofibers from spider capture wool over technical nanofibers to nanofibrous cell protrusions

• prototyping sub-200 nm 3D structures on technical surfaces enabled by advanced laser-processing

• proposing innovative industrial scale nanofiber production technology by means of novel tools

• expanding the horizon by transfer of the novel concepts of nanofiber production to biomedical applications

General Information:

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. It was submitted to the call H2020-FETOPEN-2018-2019-2020-01 and topic FET-Open Challenging Current Thinking

Project Official Website: tba

Project Title: Antiadhesive Bionic Combs for Handling of Nanofibers

Project Acronym: BioCombs4Nanofibers

Grant Agreement No:  862016

Start Date: 01.10.2019               End Date: 30.09.2022

Coordinator: UNIVERSITAT LINZ (JKU), Austria

Total Budget: EUR 3 049 050.00

Consortium Partners:

1 UNIVERSITAT LINZ (JKU), Austria

2 RHEINISCH-WESTFAELISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE AACHEN (RWTH), Germany

3 FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY HELLAS (FORTH), Greece

4 BUNDESANSTALT FUER MATERIALFORSCHUNG UND – PRUEFUNG (BAM), Germany

5 INSTITUTUL NATIONAL DE CERCETARE DEZVOLTARE PENTRU FIZICA LASERILOR PLASMEI SI

RADIATIEI (INFLPR), Romania

6 ELMARCO SRO (ELMARCO), Czech Republic