caption here

Nature is used as a source of inspiration for a lot of nanometer-scale things that we make.  Scientists will examine something in nature, figure out how it works and then try to make something similar.  The idea is that a zillion years of evolution has selected for stuff that works very well.  So it might be the pads on the foot of a gecko or the wings of a butterfly.  Now snail teeth are the latest bit of nature to be examined.  Scientists at University of California-Riverside have examined the teeth of a pretty big snail.  They discovered this conveyor belt structure with 80 rows of teeth.  How the teeth are made in part from inorganic material might provide clues as to how to make more efficient solar cells and batteries