Nanolaminate (Earth-5875)

Nanolaminate is a material used by the Covenant as plating for their warships and the combat harness of sangheili soldiers. Tougher than any material discovered by humans, it is opalescent-like, and can range in color from purple, to white-blue, silver, and bluish-black. While the plating is incredibly strong, its resilience is based around the amount of plating, which varies between ships depending on the class.

Characteristics
Nanolaminate hull plating is much more resilient than the standard UNSC titanium-A plating, and because of this a Covenant warship can whitstand large amounts of damage from UNSC Navy weaponry. The point-defense guns, common to all UNSC warships, are not powerful enough to do any significant damage on the hull plating, while Archer missiles are effective only when the hull is unshielded, which causes the ship to become vulnerable. Magnetic Accelerator Cannons are the only human weapons considered strong enough to disable and destroy the Covenant vessel once their energy shields are down, as it is powerful enough to pierce through the nanolaminate hull with one round. Some few Covenant cruisers can take a direct point-blank hit from a mass driver and still not be damaged sufficiently enough to stop working duo to the minimal damage the weapon does against the nanolaminate plating. However, a second shot will take the ship down.