Biomorphic triangulations: constructing an additional formation pathway to achieve hierarchical self-evolution in biomorphs

Abstract

Biomimetic morphologies constructed in pure inorganic systems, called biomorphs, provide a promising approach to produce advanced biomimetic materials via bottom-up self-organization. Although existing biomorphs show the potential to imitate complex and/or hierarchical micro-architectures, they can only be achieved by changing the conditions manually during the reaction, not an intelligent morphological self-evolution. In this contribution, we propose a strategy to introduce more than one type of initial variable for the construction of different formation/transition pathways to realize a hierarchical architecture via self-evolution. A hierarchical architecture with unique triangular branches was obtained successfully by initial control of both the temperature and Mg²⁺ doping, highlighting two pathways for the textured growth of polycrystals and single crystals in different hierarchies led by CO₂ and MgCO₃, respectively. Our findings lay the foundation for the future construction of materials with new complex hierarchical architectures via a self-evolution approach realized by rational pathway design.