Preparation of bionic nacre by “freezing‐mineralization” and their electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties

Abstract

Natural nacre has attracted a lot of attention due to its superior mechanical properties. It is generally made up of 95% flake calcium carbonate and 5% organic matter. In this work, we prepared the bionic nacre material using the “freezing‐mineralization” method. The bionic material exhibits a microstructure that is quite similar to that of natural material and shows a high dielectric constant. The thermal conductivity in the in‐plane direction reaches 1.15 W/(m•K) at ambient temperature, which is 2.25 times higher than the out‐of‐plane direction's, clearly demonstrating an anisotropic behavior. Additionally, the mechanical performance of the biomimetic material can be on par with that of natural materials with a maximum breakdown stress of 51.4 MPa. Our results prove that the “freezing‐mineralization” method is essential to developing bionic nacre materials.