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Materials that are strong, ultra-light weight and tough are in demand for a range of applications, requiring architectures and components carefully designed from the micrometer down to nanometer scales. Nacre-a structure found in many…
A fibrous herringbone-modified helicoidal architecture is identified within the exocuticle of an impact-resistant crustacean appendage. This previously unreported composite microstructure, which features highly textured apatite mineral…
In many natural multi-layered composites, such as in the dactyl club of Stomatopods or the shell of bivalve mollusks, the defining functional and structural properties are determined by locally varying orientations of inorganic building…
Composites are often made heterogeneous in nature to fulfill the functional demands imposed by the environment, but remain difficult to fabricate synthetically due to the lack of adequate and easily accessible processing tools. We report on…
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…
Due to their exceptional mechanical and chemical properties and their natural abundance, cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are promising building blocks of sustainable polymer composites. However, the rapid gelation of CNC dispersions has…
Soft materials capable of large inelastic deformation play an essential role in high-performance nacre-inspired architectured materials with a combination of stiffness, strength and toughness. The rigid "building blocks" made from glass or…
Spatial ordering of matter elicits exotic properties sometimes absent from a material's constituents. A few highly mineralised natural materials achieve high toughness through delocalised damage, whereas synthetic particulate composites…
Severe plastic deformation of powder blends consisting of SmCo5-Cu results in magnetically hardened nanocomposite bulk materials. The microstructure is continuously refined with increasing torsional deformation, yet, coercivity saturates at…
Understanding the fracture mechanisms in composite materials across scales, from nano- to micro-scales, is essential for an in-depth understanding of the reinforcement mechanisms and designing the next generation of lightweight,…
Nature provides many paradigms for the design and fabrication of artificial composite materials. Inspired by the relationship between the well-ordered architecture and biopolymers found in natural nacre, we present a facile strategy to…
Field induced assembly of reconfigurable structures with complex hierarchical configurations has recently become an area of intense research with the promise for exciting applications in programmable self-assembly and nano/microstructure…
We have synthesized nanoscale magnetic compasses with high yield. These ferromagnetic iron carbide nano-particles, which are encapsulated in a pair of parallel carbon needles, change their direction in response to an external magnetic…
Inorganic/inorganic composites are found in multiple applications crucial for the energy transition, from nuclear reactor to energy storage devices. Their microstructures dictate a number of properties, such as mass transport or fracture…
In nanocomposite magnetic materials the exchange coupling between phases plays a central role in the determination of the extrinsic magnetic properties of the material: coercive field, remanence magnetization. Exchange coupling is therefore…
Liquid-metal infiltrated Cu30Mo70 (weigth percentage) is subjected to severe plastic deformation using high pressure torsion. The initially equiaxed dual phase structure is gradually transformed into a lamellar structure composed of…
The development of damage-resistant structural materials that can withstand harsh environments is a major issue in materials science and engineering. Bioinspired brick-and-mortar designs have recently demonstrated a range of interesting…
To overcome the brittleness limitation of ceramics, various toughening mechanisms have been proposed. Some of the most remarkable, especially for oxides, include the tetragonal-to-monoclinic phase transformation leading to crack shielding…
We investigate the damping enhancement in a class of biomimetic staggered composites via a combination of design, modeling, and experiment. In total, three kinds of staggered composites are designed by mimicking the structure of bone and…
Many biological materials exhibit a multiscale porosity with small, mostly nanoscale pores as well as large, macroscopic capillaries to simultaneously achieve optimized mass transport capabilities and lightweight structures with large inner…