Old Headlines (No Limit)
Caltech Scientists Find New Way to Make 'Liquid Metal'
By From STAFF REPORTS
Thursday, February 28, 2008, 8:47 am

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have developed a new strategy for creating "liquid metal" that makes it able to bend significantly without breaking, while retaining a strength twice that of titanium, said a Caltech spokesperson.

It is among the toughest, or least brittle, known materials, and could be used anywhere that strong metal alloys are traditionally found, but may prove most useful in the aerospace industry, where lower density means fuel savings, said Caltech spokesperson Elisabeth Nadin.

When commercialized metallic glass known as Liquidmetal and Vitreloy hit the market several years ago in the forms of golf clubs and baseball bats, it was too brittle to withstand much duress, Nadin said.

Now, said Douglas Hofmann, a Caltech materials science graduate student and lead author of a paper presenting the method for making the new material, it can be made to flex and can be produced at relatively low cost.

"Metallic glasses now have among the highest toughness of any materials," Hofman said.

The paper is set to appear in the Feb. 28 issue of the journal Nature. All experiments were performed in Caltech's Keck Laboratory of Engineering Materials, Nadin said.