Fabrication and deformation of three-dimensional hollow ceramic nanostructures - pp893 - 898
Dongchan Jang, Lucas R. Meza, Frank Greer & Julia R. Greer
doi:10.1038/nmat3738
Hard biological materials such as diatoms and sea sponges can inspire the design of structural materials that are mechanically robust yet lightweight. Hollow titanium nitride lattices have now been fabricated that mimic the length scales (from 10 nm to 100 μm) and hierarchy of biological materials. These lattices attain tensile strengths of 1.75 GPa without failing (even after multiple deformation cycles) because of the low probability of pre-existing flaws.