Binary Synergy Strengthening and Toughening of Bio-Inspired Nacre-like Graphene Oxide/Sodium Alginate Composite Paper

Abstract

A crucial requirement for most engineering materials is the excellent balance of strength and toughness. By mimicking the hybrid hierarchical structure in nacre, a kind of nacre-like paper based on binary hybrid graphene oxide (GO)/sodium alginate (SA) building blocks has been successfully fabricated. Systematic evaluation for the mechanical property in different (dry/wet) environment/after thermal annealing shows a perfect combination of high strength and toughness. Both of the parameters are nearly many-times higher than those of similar materials because of the synergistic strengthening/toughening enhancement from the binary GO/SA hybrids. The successful fabrication route offers an excellent approach to design advanced strong integrated nacre-like composite materials, which can be applied in tissue engineering, protection, aerospace, and permeable membranes for separation and delivery.

Bone‐Inspired Materials by Design: Toughness Amplification Observed Using 3D Printing and Testing

“…The rationale of this work was to examine the biomimetic design principles to develop damage-tolerant lightweight composites, with enhanced properties than their building blocks, and use 3D printing as proof of concept. With respect to previous literature studies, [3,5,6,19,30,44] which aimed to replicate the biominerals and their characteristic fracture mechanisms, here we used an empirical biomimetic approach and we focused on bone and on its characteristic Haversian structure, which plays a major role in activating the fundamental toughening mechanisms.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Biomimicry has led to many innovations that strongly influence how we design materials and products, such as geckoinspired dry structural adhesives, [13,14] lotus leaf-inspired selfcleaning materials, [15,16] and nacre-inspired damage-tolerant nanocomposites. [3][4][5][6] Natural composites are a good source of inspiration for the design of new smart materials and continuously attract many researchers. A peculiarity of such materials is their hierarchical structure, which generally spawns lightweight composites with mechanical properties far superior to those of their constituents.…”

“…[23] process to create damage-tolerant nacre-like composites. [4,5,[26][27][28] An excellent example of effective biomimetic design is given by Chen et al, [6] who fabricated a composite paper, made of graphene oxide (GO)/sodium alginate (SA) building blocks, by mimicking the hybrid structure of natural nacre. By enhancing the H-bond formation between the two base materials, they reached a perfect combination of high strength and toughness, surpassing the properties of natural nacre and other similar composites.…”

Polyanion‐Type Electrode Materials for Sodium‐Ion Batteries

“…This C/NTP‐RT electrode exhibited a high rate and an ultralong life: a superior capacity of 83.5 mAh g −1 at a rate of 10 C, and a cyclic capacity retention of 89.3% after 10 000 cycles (Figure 7c). Even more interesting is that Nature provides a variety of intricate 3D structures that can be duplicated in the laboratory 47. Inspired by the special “core–shell” structure of frog and fish spawn, a novel core–shell framework for NTP was designed via a facile impregnation process.…”

Graphene Oxide/Polymer‐Based Biomaterials

“…[87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96] Vacuum filtration was used to rapidly self-assemble GO/gellan gum into aligned nacre-like films. The produced films were strong and flexible.…”