Professor YANG Ming from the State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry of Jilin University (JLU), in collaboration with Professor Nicholas A. Kotov from the University of Michigan, published a seminal review titled Quantitative biomimetics of high-performance materials in Nature Reviews Materials on Dec 6.

The article proposes an innovative framework that integrates Taylor series expansion and property differentials to quantify interdependence in complex, bio-inspired materials.  

While traditional biomimetics focuses on the qualitative imitation of biological structures, this work addresses key challenges such as balancing order and disorder in synthetic materials, reconciling conflicting properties, and enabling multidimensional performance optimization.

The authors highlight interfacial engineering, molecular dynamics simulations, and machine learning as pivotal tools for advancing quantitative biomimetics, which is critical for applications in energy, healthcare, and environmental technologies.  

Professor YANG, the first and corresponding author of the review, conducted this research with support from JLU’s Peiying talent program. This study paves the way for the data-driven design of next-generation high-performance materials.