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Chinese chemists have developed a new nacre-like material which is stronger than natural nacre and most other composites.
Nacre, which is also known as mother of pearl, is a naturally occurring composite formed from calcium carbonate and biopolymers that create a brickwork structure. It is also nearly a thousand times stronger than any of its component parts and a major target for biomimetic synthesis.
Design of the brickwork structure is central to developing nacre-like materials with enhanced properties. Gaoquan Shi, and colleagues, at Tsinghua University, Beijing, began by making a hydrogel from graphene and a silk protein, called fibroin.
Read the article in Nanoscale:
Strong composite films with layered structures prepared by casting silk fibroin–graphene oxide hydrogels
Liang Huang , Chun Li , Wenjing Yuan and Gaoquan Shi
DOI: 10.1039/C3NR00196B
