Nanofibrils in nature and materials engineering

Nanofibrillar materials, such as cellulose, chitin and silk, are highly ordered architectures, formed through the self-assembly of repetitive building blocks into higher-order structures, which are stabilized by non-covalent interactions. This hierarchical building principle endows many biological materials with remarkable mechanical strength, anisotropy, flexibility and optical properties, such as structural colour. These features make...