How to Use nacre in a Sentence

nacre

noun

• But nacre, the lustrous substance mollusks use to line their shell, is becoming prized once more, this time in materials science.
  — Caitlin Kennedy, Scientific American, 25 Apr. 2026
• In fact, nacre is roughly 3,000 times tougher than its calcium carbonate building blocks.
  — Caitlin Kennedy, Scientific American, 25 Apr. 2026
• For modern high-performance structural uses, an exact replica of nacre might even be undesirable because those organic silk proteins would lose their structure at high temperatures.
  — Caitlin Kennedy, Scientific American, 25 Apr. 2026
• But where limestone is crumbly and opaque, nacre’s toughness and light-bending properties come from silklike proteins that weave among the layers, holding them in place while providing enough elasticity to absorb the shock of a fracture.
  — Caitlin Kennedy, Scientific American, 25 Apr. 2026
• That’s why many material scientists are instead trying to replicate nacre’s internal architecture with different building blocks.
  — Caitlin Kennedy, Scientific American, 25 Apr. 2026
• Private is the mystery incandescence of her nacre, coveting which the likes of us killed her ancestors to make buttons, souvenirs, entire garments for ritual dancers who sought to banish their demons with her magical inner light.
  — Literary Hub, 23 Feb. 2026
• Specifically, nacre is composed of hexagonal crystals of aragonite, a kind of calcium carbonate that is also seen in limestone and that forms precisely into overlapping layers that resemble the brick-and-mortar structure of buildings.
  — Caitlin Kennedy, Scientific American, 25 Apr. 2026
• Researchers are testing some of these nacre-adjacent ceramics in next-generation nuclear reactor plants, where high resistance to fracturing is essential to prevent catastrophic failure under extreme thermal stress.
  — Caitlin Kennedy, Scientific American, 25 Apr. 2026