3D magnetic printing of bio-inspired composites with tunable mechanical properties

In the natural composites, the reinforcement particles are subtly organized into complex structures in matrix, and its various microstructures endow the biomaterials with a variety of excellent mechanical behaviors. Among the various reinforcement building blocks used in biomaterials, short fibers are the most ubiquitous reinforcement elements. Unfortunately, because of the limitation of fabrication technique, replication of these fiber-reinforced biological composites can be extremely difficult in practice. In this paper, we developed a fiber assembly 3D printing process, which can manipulate the orientation of fibers during 3D printing procedure. Benefiting from this technology, the reinforcement particles were manipulated remotely and the arrangement of reinforcement particles with higher degree of freedom was achieved. Subsequently, based on the herringbone-modified helicoidal architecture of mantis shrimp, the bio-inspired composites with various microstructures were reconstructed by 3D magnetic printing. In addition, the influence of microstructure type and parameters of bio-inspired composites on the properties of composites was studied systematically, and the quantitative relationship between microstructure and properties of the composites was established. The results show that the impact resistance and compression resistance of the composites can be significantly improved by the simple internal microstructures design, and the regression model established in this article can be used for accurate prediction of composites properties and the reliability is higher. In a word, this study opens a new route for the design of composites with unusual features.