Abstract
Tribology is omnipresent in living nature. Blinking eyes, synovial joints, white blood cells rolling along the endothelium and the foetus moving in a mother’s womb—tribological problems with evolutionary optimized solutions! This chapter introduces biology for tribologists, highlights the benefits of biomimetics (i.e., knowledge transfer from living nature to engineering), first for tribology in general and subsequently specifically for nano-tribology and materials issues in MEMS. The outlook deals with perspectives of green and sustainable nanotribology for a liveable future for all.
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Acknowledgments
The National University of Malaysia funded part of this work with its leading-edge research project scheme ‘Arus Perdana’ (grant # UKM-AP-NBT-16-2010) and the Austrian Society for the Advancement of Plant Sciences via our biomimetics pilot project ‘BioScreen’. Profs. F. Aumayr, H. Störi and G. Badurek from the Vienna University of Technology are acknowledged for enabling ICG research in the inspiring environment in Malaysia.
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Gebeshuber, I.C. (2013). Biomimetic Inspiration Regarding Nano-Tribology and Materials Issues in MEMS. In: Sinha, S., Satyanarayana, N., Lim, S. (eds) Nano-tribology and Materials in MEMS. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36935-3_2
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