Mimicking biological architectures via freeze casting

Abstract

Mimicking biological materials with sophisticated hierarchical structures composed of low-dimensional building blocks has attracted significant attention. Particularly, developing efficient, scalable preparation approaches for structural and functional biomimetic architectures to advance the understanding of structure-property relationships is of vital importance yet remains highly challenging. This preview discusses a recent contribution from H. Bai and co-workers who developed a facile combination of bidirectional freeze casting, water-vapor annealing, and densification treatment to construct sustainable nacre-mimetic silk-based composites with a typical "brick-and-mortar" structure. The biomimetic design of the single component "Silk nacre" renders the material's mechanical properties superior to those of homogeneous solvent-casted silk plates and many frequently employed polymers. Moreover, the Silk nacre was able to be manufactured into various shapes with excellent mechanical stability as well as be completely biodegraded, which showed the durable and environmentally friendly biomimetic architectures as next-generation structural and functional materials.