Bioinspired, graphene-enabled Ni composites with high strength and toughness.

Nature's wisdom resides in achieving a joint enhancement of strength and toughness by constructing intelligent, hierarchical architectures from extremely limited resources. A representative example is nacre, in which a brick-and-mortar structure enables a confluence of toughening mechanisms on multiple length scales. The result is an outstanding combination of strength and toughness which is hardly achieved by engineering materials.