Tony Starks's Iron Man suit enables him to fly, it has weapons and it's basically indestructible. What on earth (or space) is it made of?

Tony Stark first put on the Iron Man suit in 1968 and it's changed a lot over the years.

While it has always enabled Stark to fly and wear an arsenal, more recently the suit has been able to repair itself.

Dr Catherine Whitby, a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at Massey University and Principal Investigator at the MacDiarmid Institute, said self-repairing materials are kind of the "holy grail" for scientists.

And she said nature is a key inspiration.

"It's kind of like a shell that's got this incredible strength and an ability to protect Tony from all sorts of situations," said Dr Whitby, "And we're actually starting to try and imitate these kinds of shells that already form in nature."

"In some cases, some animals can repair their shells. In other cases, an animal sometimes has to shed it and grow a new one."

Scientists are now working making materials that might start to approach self-repairing.

"It's pretty early days on the self-repairing but we're already having a lot of success on mimicking bio-mineralisation in the lab," Dr Whitby said.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details