Artificial nacre

Nacre combines several unique properties, as it is a lightweight material with remarkable stiffness, strength and toughness. The hierarchical structure of nacre can be mimicked by highly filled layered silicate composites.

The synthetic layered silicate has several advantages with regard to the ultrahigh aspect ratio, the homogeneous charge distribution and the in-plane modulus (150 GPa) of a single platelet.

Liquid crystalline phases of synthetic hectorite can be converted into highly filled 1-dimensional crystalline composites. These are ammended by implementing decoupling with designed polymers acting as supramolecular bonding units to generate sacrificial bonds.