Extreme Biomimetics: Achievements and Fundamental Challenges for the Future

Extreme biomimetics represents a novel multidisciplinary direction within classical biomimetics and bioinspired materials science that draws inspiration from extremophiles and extreme natural habitats to create unusual approaches for the design of next-generation materials, including composites never reported or predicted before. This review is divided into several sections covering achievements and fundamental challenges in the following fields: sources of inspiration—organisms and locations; biological materials for extreme biomimetics based on examples of biosilica, cellulose, chitin, and structural proteins (collagen, byssus, silk, keratin). Additionally, conchixes of molluscan shell origin, fish scales, and spongin as a skeletal biocomposite of industrial sponge origin are represented and discussed from the viewpoint of extreme biomimetics. Finally, scientifically based but daring experimental decisions in modern extreme biomimetics, taking the examples of extreme carbonization of naturally pre-structured biomaterials, galvanobiomimetics, in-flame biomimetics, pyro-biomimetics, and ultra-high pressure mimetics are represented for the first time as current trends with challenging goals.