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New material imitates the layered structure of nacre

Nacre is a rainbow-colored material arranged on some shells. It derives strength and toughness from its structure: fragile mineral fragments are glued into layers by soft proteins. Now, researchers have used the same principle to develop a super-strong glass composite material that could one day make almost unbreakable smartphone screens, windshields and other items that currently rely on various types of glass processing.

This new material combines rigid glass flakes less than one hundredth of a millimeter thick with flexible acrylic. "When we combine the two together, similar to nacre, we can restore the best parts of the two components," McGill University bioengineer and co-author of the new paper describing composite materials Alan Erich Said that the paper was recently published in the journal "Science".

Both glass and acrylic themselves are transparent, but light travels through these materials at different speeds. As a result, the results of previous attempts to combine them were too opaque. Therefore, the researchers mixed a small amount of hydrocarbons with acrylic acid until it interacted with light like glass.

Ehrlicher said that the result is not only transparent, but also 400% stronger and 650% stronger than the material used in car windshields (resin sandwiched between two layers of glass). In addition, standard tools can be used to cut and drill this new substance. Ehrlicher compared the way acrylic glues glass sheets into a stacked structure with a brick wall with staggered layers: any cracks that pass through the new material will form a coiled path along the acrylic seams, so more energy is needed. rupture. "By forcing it to go a long way, breaking through a lot of this connecting material-a lot of this'mortar', and so on-we created a very, very tough material," he explained.

To build these layers, researchers only need to spin their components in a centrifuge. This simplicity means "you will be able to do this on a much larger scale than many [other] synthetic mother-of-pearls can do," said Lara Estrov, a materials scientist at Cornell University. He was not involved in this research. This easy-to-manufacture method can finally achieve various applications. Arun Varshneya, president of Saxon Glass Technologies, pointed out that this material is still not as transparent as glass and is more prone to surface scratches. Nonetheless, he said, “Actually, I am very excited about this heroic effort in the right direction.” Varshneya was not involved in the study either. He praised the strength of composites in the entire material, which is incompatible with intelligence. The chemically strengthened glass (in which hardening is limited to a thin surface layer) used in items such as mobile phone screens is a sharp contrast.

Ehrlicher said that he hopes to continuously improve the transparency and scratch resistance of new materials while maintaining its excellent toughness. "Inevitably, this is a trade-off between transparency and strength, strength and stiffness, or work to break and stiffness," he said. "And what we are creating here is the best balance of all these."

Sophie Bushwick is the associate technical editor of Scientific American. Follow Sophie Bushwick on Twitter: Nick Higgins

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