Silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) is an excellent candidate for engineering ceramics; however, its toughness and hardness remain fundamentally constrained by the inherent limitations arising from the incompatible α-phase (characterized by high hardness) and β-phase (characterized by high toughness). Herein, we report the exploration of advanced Si₃N₄ ceramics enabled by an intergrown cluster microstructure, which achieves a synergistic enhancement in both toughness (10.2 ± 0.3 MPa·m¹/²) and Vickers hardness (20.1 ± 0.3 GPa). These synergistic properties represent the state-of-the-art among Si₃N₄ ceramics fabricated via liquid-phase sintering reported to date. It has been verified that the formation of columnar clusters is driven by a high-pressure-induced coarsening process. The established metastable growth mechanism may open an avenue for fabricating new-generation Si₃N₄ ceramics with superb performance.

The nacreous layer of shells has become an excellent biomimetic template of materials due to its unique structure. Inspired by the highly complex multilayered structure of shells, biomimetic layered composite protective materials with outstanding strength, toughness, and impact resistance have been developed. As the hard phase in biomimetic pearlescent layered protective materials, ceramics suffer from inherent low toughness. Applying prestress proved to be an efficient method to enhance their toughness and impact resistance. In this study, prestressed biomimetic periodic laminated (TiB₂—TiB)/Ti protective materials were fabricated with spark plasma sintering (SPS) technology under the conditions of 1450 ℃ and 30 MPa in an argon atmosphere. Moreover, both experimental and numerical simulation analyses were conducted to investigate their protective performance. Compared to non-prestressed protective materials, the prestressed constrained materials exhibited the significantly improved protective performance with reduced penetration depth, substantially lower residual velocity, and kinetic energy after impact. This study provided valuable insights into the structural design and performance optimization of other protective materials.

Bioprocessing-inspired fabrication technology of materials is inspired by a subtle structure formation process of natural materials, which is a developing technology for materials synthesis and preparation. This review introduced recent development on the bioprocessing-inspired fabrication technology of materials around the bio-processing and the relationship between bio-processing and bio-structure. The existing related research work was represented from the aspects of bio mineralization-inspired synthesis and preparation, photosynthesis-inspired synthesis, and synthesis and preparation of a combination of photosynthesis and bio mineralization. In addition, the research objectives of bioprocessing-inspired fabrication technology of materials were also summarized, and the development trend was prospected as well.

High-purity and high-yield boron nitride nanotubes with large aspect ratio were prepared by a facile two-step process, including the synthesis of boron/nickel containing precursors by precipitation reactions and subsequent thermally catalytic chemical vapor deposition reactions. The influence of catalyst content and annealing temperature on the phase composition and microstructure of the products were investigated. The results show that it is difficult to exert the catalytic effect of nickel-based catalyst at low temperatures (< 1 400 ℃). At appropriate temperatures (1 400–1 500 ℃), highly crystalline boron nitride nanotubes with a length of more than 50 μm and a diameter of 50 nm are formed. The content of catalyst in the precursor mainly affects the morphology of the boron nitride product. If the content is too low, it is easy to form boron nitride particles; while high catalyst content can easily lead to catalyst aggregation and form a submicron one-dimensional boron nitride with unregular structure. Based on microstructural evolutions, phase changes, and thermodynamic analysis, the vapor-liquid-solid (V-L-S) growth mechanism of the tip growth mode dominates the formation of boron nitride nanotubes has also been verified.