Colorful, Waterproof Textiles Inspired by Arthropods

Innovation: Industry

Amphico

Protect From Excess Liquids

While water is essential to life, too much water or other liquids can overwhelm living systems. Excess liquids can, for example, decrease a living system’s access to oxygen, promote excessive bacterial or fungal growth, or strip away soil and nutrients. To prevent the accumulation of excess liquids, living systems must control the movement of liquids across their boundaries or surfaces. They do so using waterproofing materials or structures, slowing flow, and/or facilitating flow to move the liquid away. Plant leaves, for example, commonly have waxy surfaces comprised of water-repelling chemicals to keep water from engorging the leaves or facilitating bacterial and fungal growth.

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Protect From Chemicals

Chemicals are everywhere in the bodies of living organisms and their external environments. While most chemicals are valuable or benign, some are toxic, including those used for defense (such as the mucus that protects clownfish from an anemone’s stinging tentacles). Even naturally-occurring chemicals, such as arsenic, must be managed to reduce their impact. Some living systems have strategies to break down harmful chemicals, alter them into less toxic forms, physically prevent chemicals from harming sensitive tissues, and more. For example, some herbivorous mammals can digest toxic compounds in plants because they have a particular enzyme that helps them process poisonous plant compounds.

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Protect From Dirt/solids

When dirt and other small solids adhere to living systems, they can slow them down, create blockages, reduce their ability to carry out vital functions, or cause surface wear and tear. Due to electrostatic forces, it’s easy for dirt and other solids to adhere to surfaces, so living systems must overcome those forces. An earthworm, for example, uses a small electric current to keep soil particles from adhering to its body as it moves through the soil. This enables it to move more efficiently by reducing drag.

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Protect From Temperature

Many living systems function best within specific temperature ranges. Temperatures higher or lower than that range can negatively impact a living system’s physiological or chemical processes, and damage its exterior or interior. Living systems must manage high or low temperatures using minimal energy, which often requires controlling responses along incremental temperature changes. To do so, living systems use a variety of strategies, such as avoiding high or low temperatures, removing excess heat, and holding heat in. Insulation is a well-known example of managing low temperatures by retaining heat using thick layers of hair, fur, or feathers to hold warm air next to the skin.

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Send Light Signals in the Visible Spectrum

The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that the human eye can detect. Visible light can be thought of in two ways–light as illumination (such as that used by fireflies) and colors that result from light being absorbed or reflected. Living systems use light for a variety of purposes. Sometimes, they use it to make themselves highly visible (like a peacock showing off his brilliant feathers to a potential mate). Other times, they use it to become virtually invisible (like an owl hiding in plain sight when it rests during the day). When a living system sends a light signal, it must create that light or color in an energy- and material-efficient way. Living systems create and enhance color using such strategies as non-toxic pigments, structures that bend and absorb different wavelengths, and chemical processes that create bioluminescence.

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Amphico mimics the waterproofing strategy of springtails and the coloring of butterflies to produce easy-to-recycle performance clothing.

Benefits

No toxic chemicals
Easier-to-recycle garments
Reduced use of water

Applications

Clothing
Upholstery

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 6: Clean Water & Sanitation
Goal 12: Responsible Production & Consumption

The Challenge

Much of the colorful, breathable, waterproof gear that people wear when they’re out loving nature is terrible for the environment. That’s because each of these functions is usually achieved by combining different types of materials, and coating them in harmful, non-degradable chemicals. Toxic particles are then shed from the garment during use and washing, and the combination of materials makes the garment difficult to recycle at the end of its useful life.

Innovation Details

Amphico has created easier-to-recycle textiles—building up complex performance through the structure of simple substances.

To make its textiles, Amphico starts with a single, non-polar substance which is drawn out into nano-textured filaments. The filaments are bundled and twisted to form yarn with two levels of nano-micro structures, and then woven together to create a non-polar fabric with texturing at the nano, micro, and macro scales.

To impart a variety of colors, Amphico uses only four different-colored yarns, twisting them in different combinations, and weaving them in different patterns. This creates a multitude of colors, reducing the number of dyes needed and decreasing the amount of freshwater consumed during the coloring process by over 80 percent.

The colored woven fabric is then combined with the waterproof, breathable membrane, and since the textile and membrane are made out of the same material, the final product is much easier to recycle.

Biological Model

Many living organisms manage to achieve multiple functions using a small toolbox of materials and adding function through texture, not chemicals.

Springtails are microscopic arthropods that often dwell in mucky habitats. To protect themselves from drowning or being infected by harmful bacteria, their bodies are covered with tiny, pillar-shaped protrusions covered with a waxy, non-polar substance. Both of those features lead water to roll right off the springtail’s back.

Tiger beetles and butterflies produce color on their bodies and wings through similar nanoscale structures. Their multi-textured surfaces manipulate different wavelengths of light to produce micro-scale dots of a few set colors, which blend—like pixels on a TV screen or dots in a pointillist painting—to produce the illusion of countless other colors.

See Related Content

Biological Strategy

Overhang Structures Repel Various Liquids

Springtails

Skin of springtails repels liquids with undercut structures that stabilize air bubbles.

Biological Strategy

Butterflies Hack Light Waves to Produce Brilliant Color

Morpho butterfly

Wings of morpho butterflies create color by causing light waves to diffract and interfere.

Ray of Hope Prize®

The Ray of Hope Prize celebrates nature-inspired solutions addressing the world’s biggest environmental and sustainability challenges. Created in honor of Ray C. Anderson, founder of Interface, Inc. and a business and sustainability leader, the $100,000 Ray of Hope Prize helps startups cross a critical threshold in becoming viable businesses by amplifying their stories and providing them with equity-free funding. The prize shines a light on the innovative, nature-inspired solutions that we need to build a sustainable and resilient world. Amphico was selected as a finalist for the 2022 Ray of Hope Prize.

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Sun rays filter through the forest canopy and shine upon a rocky creek

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