Fabrication of nature-inspired bulk laminar composites by a powder processing

Among many kinds of nano-laminar composites inspired by the brick and mortar structure of nacre in mollusk shells, a bulky, dense and ceramics-base composite has been a missing piece despite its importance. Here we report that such a composite with a submicron-order layered structure can be fabricated by a simple method, sintering aligned flake-like inorganic powder coated with ductile matrix material. The composites fabricated by this method had crack extension resistance by interface delamination, crack deflection, and ligament bridging by the ductile matrix. They showed non-brittle fracture behavior in a bending test despite a quite high flake volume fraction of over 80%, and had a work of fracture (WOF) of more than 300 J/m(2), several hundreds times as large as that of monolithic glass. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.