Abstract
Materials combining optical transparency and mechanical strength are highly demanded for electronic displays, structural windows and in the arts, but the oxide-based glasses currently used in most of these applications suffer from brittle fracture and low crack tolerance. We report a simple approach to fabricate bulk transparent materials with a nacre-like architecture that can effectively arrest the propagation of cracks during fracture. Mechanical characterization shows that our glass-based composites exceed up to a factor of 3 the fracture toughness of common glasses, while keeping flexural strengths comparable to transparent polymers, silica- and soda-lime glasses. Due to the presence of stiff reinforcing platelets, the hardness of the obtained composites is an order of magnitude higher than that of transparent polymers. By implementing biological design principles into glass-based materials at the microscale, our approach opens a promising new avenue for the manufacturing of structural materials combining antagonistic functional properties.
Highlights
Materials combining optical transparency and mechanical strength are highly demanded for electronic displays, structural windows and in the arts, but the oxide-based glasses currently used in most of these applications suffer from brittle fracture and low crack tolerance
Optical transparency is ubiquitous in modern technologies
All these applications require materials that are sufficiently strong and hard to withstand the wearing and high mechanical stresses experienced in use
Summary
Materials combining optical transparency and mechanical strength are highly demanded for electronic displays, structural windows and in the arts, but the oxide-based glasses currently used in most of these applications suffer from brittle fracture and low crack tolerance. Current approaches to increase the resistance against fracture of glass often rely on the introduction of compressive stress states on the outermost surfaces, mainly by thermal and chemical treatments, resulting in the socalled tempered glasses[1,2,3] This typically leads to a four- to sixfold increase in the mechanical strength, compared with untreated silica glass, and to a substantial increase in the resistance against crack initiation. In contrast to glass tempering, microstructuring through laser engraving has recently been shown to be an effective approach to imbue brittle glasses with true fracture-toughening mechanisms[6] In such process, a laser is used to create weak architectured interfaces that deflect cracks and provide some of the energydissipating mechanisms, often found in tough biological materials, like teeth and mollusk shells. While previous examples of nacre-like transparent films and laminates[17,18] or non-transparent glass-reinforced nacre-like composites[19] have been reported, the combination of optical transparency with high strength and high fracture resistance in a bulk material remains an open challenge
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