Abstract
Robust, functional, and flame retardant coatings are attractive in various fields such as building construction, food packaging, electronics encapsulation, and so on. Here, strong, colorful, and fire-retardant micrometer-thick hybrid coatings are reported, which can be constructed via an enhanced layer-by-layer assembly of graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets and layered double hydroxide (LDH) nanoplatelets. The fabricated GO-LDH hybrid coatings show uniform nacre-like layered structures that endow them good mechanic properties with Young's modulus of approximate to 18 GPa and hardness of approximate to 0.68 GPa. In addition, the GO-LDH hybrid coatings exhibit nacre-like iridescence and attractive flame retardancy as well due to their well-defined 2D microstructures. This kind of nacre-inspired GO-LDH hybrid thick coatings will be applied in various fields in future due to their high strength and multifunctionalities.