Achieving Robust and High-Transmittance Bioceramics with Minimal Organic Additives via a Supervariate Strategy

A fundamental dilemma in synthetic ceramic composites is that incorporating polymers to enhance toughness sacrifices hardness and often necessitates high organic content for effective integration. Nature solves this differently, building strong, robust minerals like nacre and tooth enamel with no more than 10% organic content─a contrast pointing to alternative material design principles. Here, we report a "supervariate" strategy to produce strong, robust biomineral-organic hybrids: flowable minerals that are multi-ionic, hydrated, and amorphous require only minimal organic additives to achieve thorough interfacial blending and nanofusion when pressed in an aqueous, room-temperature environment. The resulting composites deliver uncompromised hardness (1.6 GPa), excellent tensile ductility (10%), compressive toughness (95 MJ m-3), and high transmittance (78%) for millimeter-thick samples. This work provides an energy-efficient pathway to functional mineral monoliths that are strong, ductile, lightweight, and damage-tolerant and offers insights into biomineralization mechanisms.