Using a limited selection of ordinary components and at ambient temperature, nature has managed to produce a wide range of incredibly diverse materials with astonishingly elegant and complex architectures. Probably the most famous example is nacre, or mother-of-pearl, the inner lining of the shells of abalone and certain other mollusks. Nacre is 95% aragonite, a hard but brittle calcium carbonate mineral, that exhibits fracture toughness exceedingly greater than that of pure aragonite, when tested in the direction perpendicular to the platelets. No human-made composite outperforms its constituent materials by such a wide margin. Nature’s unique ability to combine the desirable properties of components into a material that performs significantly better than the sum of its parts has sparked strong interest in bioinspired materials design.

中文翻译：

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通过冷冻构建的复杂复合材料

在环境温度下，使用有限的普通组件选择，大自然已经成功地生产出种类繁多的材料，这些材料具有惊人的优雅和复杂的架构。最著名的例子可能是珍珠母或珍珠母，即鲍鱼和某些其他软体动物壳的内层。珍珠层是 95% 的文石，一种硬而脆的碳酸钙矿物，在垂直于片晶的方向进行测试时，其断裂韧性远高于纯文石。没有任何人造复合材料能如此大幅度地超越其组成材料。大自然独特的能力将组件的理想特性组合成一种性能明显优于其各部分总和的材料，这激发了人们对仿生材料设计的浓厚兴趣。