Glasses have numerous applications due to their exceptional transparency. However, poor fracture and impact resistance limit their applications as an engineering material. One relatively recent approach to improve the mechanical properties of materials is through bio-inspiration. Structural biological composites such as nacre, the protective inner layer of mollusk shells, offer far superior mechanical properties relative to their constituents. This has motivated researchers to mimic the design principles in natural composites to create tough transparent materials. However, current bio-inspired materials lack fabrication scalability or offer poor optical transmission. Here, we are working on an efficient, scalable bulk process for developing optically transparent tough composites with nacreous structure.

Amini, A et al. “Centrifugation and index matching yield a strong and transparent bioinspired nacreous composite”, Science, 373:1229-1234, 2021.