It's three times stronger than conventional glass, with five times the fracture resistance. 🧐
Making glass stronger through copying nature
Currently, the only way to make glass stronger is to temper or laminate it. While this can reinforce the glass, the process are costly and do not provide any additional structural strength once damaged. “Until now there were trade-offs between high strength, toughness, and transparency. Our new material is not only three times stronger than the normal glass, but also more than five times more fracture-resistant,” saysThe inspiration for this new type of glass came from nature - namely nacre or"mother of pearl". To the end, scientists at McGill managed to develop the new glass and acrylic composite. “Nature is a master of design.
“It’s made of stiff pieces of chalk-like matter that are layered with soft proteins that are highly elastic. This structure produces exceptional strength, making it 3000 times tougher than the materials that compose it,” he adds., researchers were able to replicate it in glass using glass flakes and acrylic.