SPP 1569: Generation of Multifunctional Inorganic Materials by Molecular Bionics

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Inorganic functional materials have tremendous impact on key technologies relevant for the further development of future fields like information technology or energy generation and storage. In this connection complex-structured multifunctional inorganic materials as well as their hybrids with organic components play a main role. The generation of such materials with defined structure and stoichiometry via conventional processing is limited, since such processes require increased temperatures and/or pressures as well as large technological efforts. Accordingly, there are world-wide research activities to overcome such limitations and to search for new procedures, which allow the manufacturing of new materials at ambient condition with reduced processing efforts. Living nature provides impressive evolution-optimised processes, which lead to complex-structured multifunctional inorganic solids. Their formation occurs via biomineralisation in aqueous environments at ambient conditions and is genetically determined. During these processes biopolymeric templates that control the mineralisation and the structure formation of the inorganic components play a main role. These processes also involve molecular self-assembly and finally yield composites made of non-metallic inorganic solids like calcium phosphate or carbonate and bioorganic components. Such inorganic/bioorganic hybrids exhibit unique multifunctional features and in particular, their performance and property spectrum is further tuned and expanded by the incorporation of the bioorganic fraction. Even though many of the technically relevant materials are not generated by the processes developed by biological evolution, the consideration of biomineralisation principles provides promising perspectives for the generation of inorganic functional materials via the interaction between bioorganic and inorganic components. The Priority Programmes main scientific objective is to apply the principles of biomineralisation to the generation of complex-structured multifunctional inorganic materials as well as of their hybrids with bioorganic portions. In order to achieve this goal the Priority Programme addresses research work on (1) the in vitro and in vivo generation of such materials directed by biomolecule-based templates with a main focus on 2D and 3D structures, (2) the characterisation of the formation mechanisms as well as of the structure of the materials, (3) the investigation and design of the physical and chemical properties of the materials.Furthermore, these experimental studies are accompanied by computational modelling of the formation, structure and properties of the materials.