Nacreous Glass Composites with Superior Performance Engineered through Mechanical Vibration and Silanization

Abstract

Bioinspiration offers alternative solutions to overcome the inherent drawbacks of glass, such as low fracture toughness, strength, and impact resistance. Synthetic composites inspired by natural materials, such as nacre, have been recently introduced as an alternative to glasses. However, these have all suffered from trade‐offs between rigidity, optical clarity, fabrication scalability, and complexity. Here, two wave‐based fabrication techniques are presented to create a nacreous structure from glass flakes and polymethyl methacrylate. The glass's surface energy is controlled by adjusting the silane coverage on the glass surface, enabling high levels of structural compactness, mechanical properties, and optical clarity. The scalable glass composite, with a ≈60% glass volume fraction, possesses strength, fracture toughness, and impact resistance values, outperforming annealed glass by 4300%, 350%, and 400%, respectively. It also has a haze level of ≈18%, almost 60% less than that of the similar centrifuged‐based glass composite. This composite is proposed as a potential glass alternative in diverse applications.