Glass that bends but doesn鈥檛 break
鈥淢ollusk shells are made up of about 95 per cent chalk, which is very brittle in its pure form,鈥� says Barthelat. 鈥淏ut nacre, or mother-of-pearl, which coats the inner shells, is made up of microscopic tablets that are a bit like miniature Lego building blocks, is known to be extremely strong and tough, which is why people have been studying its structure for the past twenty years.鈥�
Previous attempts to recreate the structures of nacre have proved to be challenging, according to Barthelat. 鈥淚magine trying to build a Lego wall with microscopic building blocks. It鈥檚 not the easiest thing in the world.鈥� Instead, what he and his team chose to do was to study the internal 鈥榳eak鈥� boundaries or edges to be found in natural materials like nacre and then use lasers to engrave networks of 3D micro-cracks in glass slides in order to create similar weak boundaries. The results were dramatic.
The researchers were able to increase the toughness of glass slides (the kind of glass rectangles that get put under microscopes) 200 times compared to non-engraved slides. By engraving networks of micro-cracks in configurations of wavy lines in shapes similar to the wavy edges of pieces in a jigsaw puzzle in the surface of borosilicate glass, they were able to stop the cracks from propagating and becoming larger. They then filled these micro-cracks with聽polyurethane, although according to Barthelat, this second process is not essential since the patterns of micro-cracks in themselves are sufficient to stop the glass from shattering.
The researchers worked with glass slides simply because they were accessible, but Barthelat believes that the process will be very easy to scale up to any size of glass sheet, since people are already engraving logos and patterns on glass panels. He and his team are excited about the work that lies ahead for them.
鈥淲hat we know now is that we can toughen glass, or other materials, by using patterns of micro-cracks to guide larger cracks, and in the process absorb the energy from an impact,鈥� says Barthelat. 鈥淲e chose to work with glass because we wanted to work with the archetypal brittle material. But we plan to go on to work with ceramics and polymers in future. Observing the natural world can clearly lead to improved man-made designs.鈥�
To read the full paper: 鈥極vercoming the brittleness of glass through bio-inspiration and micro-architecture鈥� by F. Barthelat et al in Nature Communications:
The research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), with partial support for one of the authors from a 苹果淫院 Engineering Doctoral Award. The authors acknowledge useful technical advice by the company Vitro.
To contact the researcher directly: Fran%C3%A7ois.barthelat [at] mcgill.ca (Fran莽ois Barthelat) | Dept. Of Mechanical Engineering | 苹果淫院 | 514-398-6318
