Although it seems tedious, could this method provide a solution to any body armour problems the US military has?
Researchers at
LBNL are using freezing water to make nacre like layers (mollusk shell/mother-of-pearl).
I know mollusks shells are hard, but could they stop shrapnel or a AK?
The researchers knew that when seawater freezes, it can form tiny plates of ice. Impurities in the water are squeezed out as the plates form and
become trapped in the spaces between them. Tomsia's group exploits this behavior using concentrated suspensions of ceramic particles in water. As the
water freezes, it pushes the ceramic particles into the layers between the ice plates. The rate of freezing determines the thickness of the resulting
ceramic layers, which can range from 1 to 200 µm.
