Abstract: Biomimetic design principles provide new methods and approaches to create new materials. Learning from nature will give us important inspiration to develop new methods to construct artificial advanced materials. Nacre is a kind of natural organic / inorganic hybrid hierarchical biological composite material. Its unique "bricks - mortar" assembly structure in a hierarchical fashion gives it extraordinary mechanical properties. Inspired by the nacre, many domestic and foreign research groups have synthesized a series of nacre-like or related composites using different methods, which have great potential application in the fields of aeronautics and astronautics, military, civil engineering and machinery etc. This paper reviews the structure and the toughening mechanisms of nacre, the imitation of nacre-like materials of different preparation methods in recent years, and some opinions and ideas are put forward.

Key words: Biomimetic materials, Nacre, Layered composite materials, Organic / inorganic hybrid, Bioinspired design