Bio-Enabled Synthesis of Metamaterials

Biological systems offer more than an inspiration for the spontaneous hierarchical organization of matter at length scales between 1 and 1000 nm. They also provide useful principles and molecular building blocks that have recently emerged with the proven ability to generate extended three-dimensional structures of hybrid biotic/abiotic components arranged with molecular precision. These principles and tools draw from the methods of molecular biology and modern biochemistry and are expected to provide unmatched flexibility in building supramolecular architectures, notably structures made of artificial atoms whose coupled responses to electromagnetic or elastic excitations have been predicted to yield astonishing properties unparalleled by any conventional materials. To illustrate the potential of merging bio-enabled organization with metamaterials synthesis, we provide here a succinct overview of the architectural constraints leading to metamaterial behavior together with examples of biological material assembly that are particularly promising to comply with these constraints.