Next Generation Bioinspired Glass Composite
In a recent Advanced Functional Materials publication, researchers from the Complex Materials group have developed a manufacturing route to tune the levels of mineral bridges and platelet interconnectivity in a transparent glass-platelets reinforced composite. These bulk transparent materials show an unprecedented combination of strength and fracture toughness, that can potentially fulfil currently unmet demands in electronic displays and related technologies.
Bulk materials with remarkable mechanical properties have been developed by incorporating design principles of biological nacre into synthetic composites. However, this potential has not yet been fully leveraged for the fabrication of tough and strong materials that are also optically transparent. In a recent Advanced Functional Materials publication, researchers in the Complex Materials group, Multifunctional Materials and of the Centre for Advanced Structural Ceramics (CASC, Imperial College, UK), have developed a manufacturing route that enables the formation of nacre-like mineral bridges in a bioinspired composite consisting of glass platelets infiltrated with an index-matching polymer matrix.
Tommaso Magrini (Complex Materials) and co-workers have demonstrated that the formation of interconnections between platelets leads to bulk transparent materials with an unprecedented combination of strength and fracture toughness. This unusual set of properties can potentially fulfil currently unmet demands in electronic displays and related technologies. Their main findings have been published in the scientific journal Advanced Functional Materials.
- Tommaso Magrini, Simon Moser, Madeleine Fellner, Alessandro Lauria, Florian Bouville, and André R. Studart, Transparent Nacre‐like Composites Toughened through Mineral Bridges, Adv. Funct. Mater. 2020, 2002149. external pageDOI:10.1002/adfm.202002149
- Complex Materials