A ceramic material created using ice crystals as a template has demonstrated a rare combination of high strength, toughness and stiffness.

Sylvain Deville of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Cavaillon and his colleagues made the material from alumina platelets, alumina nanoparticles and a silica–calcia glass. When they froze the material, ice crystals grew that caused the platelets to align into layers, trapping the nanoparticles between them. These layers can be pressed and sintered into pieces a few centimetres in diameter and a few millimetres thick. Under the microscope this material resembles nacre, which makes up many seashells, and is as strong and tough as many aluminium alloys used in engineering, but with higher hardness and stiffness, which it maintains up to 600 °C.

Nature Mat. http://doi.org/r29 (2014)