Hierarchically designed nacre-like composites with enhanced impact resistance

Lightweight and mechanically robust composites are widely utilized as structural components in many different sectors. These structural components often face the challenge of dynamic impact loads. Therefore, research on how to improve the impact resistance of structural materials has always been highly important. In this study, on the basis of a scalable bottom-up assembly route, we prepare multilayered nacre-like composites with enhanced impact resistance. The multilayered nacre-like composites have a brick-and-mortar structure at the nanoscale and a rigid‒soft laminate structure at the microscale. The experimental results revealed that the hierarchically designed composites demonstrated hierarchical toughening behavior under quasistatic loading conditions and exhibited greatly improved impact resistance under dynamic loading conditions. This study provides a theoretical basis for the relationship between the structure and dynamic mechanical properties of multilayered nacre-like composites and provides new ideas for the future research and development of impact-resistant composites.