Crack engineering for the construction of arbitrary hierarchical architectures
Crack engineering for the construction of arbitrary hierarchical architectures
复制标题
用于构造任意层次结构的破解工程
DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1915332116
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发表时间：
2019-11-26
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Ren, Kangning
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Li, Wanbo;Yu, Miao;Ren, Kangning
Significance Despite emerging breakthroughs in the achievement of numerous elegant biomimetic structures that impart fascinating functionalities, bioinspired materials still suffer from poor structural durability, chemical reliability, flexibility, and optical transparency, as well as unaffordable cost and low throughput, thus preventing their broad real-life applications. In striking contrast to conventional wisdom, we demonstrate that the usually avoided and detrimental elastic crack phenomenon can be translated into powerful configurable-crack engineering to achieve structures and functions that are impossible to realize even using state-of-the-art techniques. Our approach dramatically enriches the freedom and flexibility in the design of materials to mimic various natural living organisms and paves the road for translating nature’s inspirations into real-world applications. Three-dimensional hierarchical morphologies widely exist in natural and biomimetic materials, which impart preferential functions including liquid and mass transport, energy conversion, and signal transmission for various applications. While notable progress has been made in the design and manufacturing of various hierarchical materials, the state-of-the-art approaches suffer from limited materials selection, high costs, as well as low processing throughput. Herein, by harnessing the configurable elastic crack engineering—controlled formation and configuration of cracks in elastic materials—an effect normally avoided in various industrial processes, we report the development of a facile and powerful technique that enables the faithful transfer of arbitrary hierarchical structures with broad material compatibility and structural and functional integrity. Our work paves the way for the cost-effective, large-scale production of a variety of flexible, inexpensive, and transparent 3D hierarchical and biomimetic materials.
