How does nature create materials that are strong, tough, and lightweight all at the same time? This is a question that researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are trying to answer by looking at the abalone shell. Robert Ritchie says his team has created a ceramic material with the unique properties of the abalone shell in mind.

"Abalone shells are just remarkable. They are extraordinarily tough material, I mean seagulls fly to great heights just to drop it and try to break it, right? The other example though where nature does extremely well is it makes lightweight structures I mean these shells are very lightweight. And that puts it into the realm of the ceramic, which is a very hard, very high tension, very lightweight material."

But the material they made doesn’t look like a shell. It’s a step that Ritchie says is the most difficult to recreate.

"If we can understand how nature does it, the next step is to try to make something synthetically in that image. And that is by far the most difficult step."