Researchers at Columbia Engineering have demonstrated for the first time a new technique that takes its inspiration from the nacre of oyster shells, a composite material that has extraordinary mechanical properties, including great strength and resilience. By changing the crystallization speed of a polymer initially well-mixed with nanoparticles, the team was able to control how the nanoparticles self-assemble into structures at three very different length scale regimes. This multiscale ordering can make the base material almost an order of magnitude stiffer while still retaining the desired deformability and lightweight behavior of the polymeric materials. The study, led by Sanat Kumar, Bykhovsky Professor of Chemical Engineering, is published June 7 online in ACS Central Science.