Natural microstructures can provide a permanent solution to an intricate manmade challenge. Some recent research conducted by a group reported a fig leaf utilized to create complex network of iron carbide that is a powerful magnetic material. This technique developed could actually be intensely helpful to generate carbide materials.

Metal carbides display a range of utilizable properties such as hardness, catalytic properties or conductivity. Their common application already exists in the drill bits that use tungsten carbide for wear-resistance property. Researchers, though, are working out on the ways by which their structure could be controlled on the micro and nano scale. This will facilitate their use on a varied scale from medical imaging to electrochemical reactions.

The production of carbides in forms of nanoparticles, nanowires or porous structures is very rare because of the possible reason of uncontrolled crustal growth they depict at high temperatures of production.

The research work that has been highlighted here used a biological template to design an intricate and laddered microstructure of iron carbide. The experiment was conducted by wetting through a leaf in an iron acetate solution. After this, it was heated under nitrogen which developed a completely ‘magnetic leaf’. This chemical process converted a simple leaf into as magnetic one by magnetizing the entire internal leaf network that was able to conduct electricity. The material produced is iron carbide, which has the both magnetic and conducting property so the leaf was tested as an electrode in the dissociation of water into bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen.

The actual significance of the experiment lies in the fact that it can be a path breaking one in generating micro structures of complex metal carbide. Nature is full of carbon-rich makes, which can be utilized to produce artificial polymers in various forms such as fibres, porous sponges or networks. The template that we choose will assess the result of any such experiment where different metallic oxide can be obtained depending upon the specific properties of the template.