Nanolaminate

Nanolaminate, also known as Laminar armor or Laminar plating and colloquially known as Nanolam by the UNSC, is a category of materials widely used by the Covenant. Nanolaminates are ubiquitous in the Covenant as cladding materials, from weapons, armor and vehicles to starships and even architecture and everyday objects.

These materials are difficult to meaningfully categorize in terms of their material properties, as different nanolaminates often have little in common beyond their manufacturing process in assembly forges. Generally, nanolaminates are renowned for their versatility, durability, light weight and highly advanced thermal management properties, a necessary trait due to the ubiquity of directed energy weapons in the Covenant meta-civilization. Beyond these basic traits, specific types of nanolaminate vary wildly in their properties, and their exact structural composition and features depend largely on the intended use case; for example, a common warrior's nanolaminate armor is less than a centimeter in thickness, while that on a warship can be many meters thick and have dozens of layers.

Nanolaminate is a collection of numerous layers of alloys, composites, meshes and metamaterials overlaid on one another in the sophisticated manufacturing processes that characterize Covenant assembly forges and fabricators. This combination of layers results in a material that is highly versatile and multifunctional. This is also the primary requirement for its mass manufacture, as laminar sheets cannot be produced in conventional industry due to the very particular combination of nanomachines, gravitics, magnetic fields and other specialized machinery used in Covenant manufacturing processes. The various layers that comprise nanolaminate are applied in different ways, from using nanomachines to "grow" the base structure around a supporting honeycomb mesh to strands of superconducting thread embedded within the material to serve as waveguides for energy shielding and overlaid with thermal-distributing refractive crystalline layers to form the pearlescent sheen Covenant armor is known for. Most nanolaminates also have select programmable features, such as the ability to change color or patterns at will.

By the late 2560s, the UNSC was beginning to be able to produce small patches of a nanolaminate equivalent due to the reverse-engineering of assembly forge-like systems.

T'Soram-blend
Arguably the best armor option on the market, T'Soram-blend nanolaminate is highly prized in the fields of shipbuilding and fortifications. Strong and light, yet ductile enough to resist cracking, it provides equal resistance to kinetic, explosion, and directed-energy weapons, although some competitors may be better in individual areas. More importantly, it is a self-contained system that has embedded shield emitters and cooling systems running all through the material, simplifying a shipwright's need to incorporate these systems. Out of the forge, it has a distinct reddish hue with a dark swirls that are present throughout its thickness, which serves as a useful way of determining if a given ingot is genuine.

The biggest limitation to a wider use of this blend is simple cost and issues with supply. It has never been made in quantity, as the original clan that made it carefully guarded the secrets to its creation. When they were wiped out by a coalition of rival states, its production had ceased for over a century. Nowadays, the Worldly Guilds of Akurr-Zufam is the sole organization responsible for manufacturing it, and it remains a highly exclusive and expensive commodity.