Transparent, Strong, and Tough Bioinspired Composites
By engineering the microstructure of a glass composite, researchers from the Complex Materials group in D-MATL have designed the first transparent platelet-reinforced composite that combines high strength with slow and stable crack propagation.
Materials combining optical transparency and mechanical strength are highly demanded for electronic displays, structural windows and in the arts. However, the oxide-based glasses currently used in most of these applications suffer from brittle fracture and poor crack tolerance. he researchers in the Complex Materials group have developed a simple and scalable approach to fabricate bulk transparent materials with a nacre-like architecture that exceed up to a factor 3 the fracture toughness of common glasses, while keeping high flexural strengths. Their main findings have been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications (find link below).
Tommaso Magrini, Florian Bouville, Alessandro Lauria, Hortense Le Ferrand, Tobias P. Niebel, and André R. Studart, Transparent and tough bulk composites inspired by nacre, Nature Communications 10, 2794 (2019). external pageDOI:10.1038/s41467-019-10829-2