“Glass stronger and tougher than steel? A new type of damage-tolerant metallic glass, demonstrating a strength and toughness beyond that of any known material, has been developed and tested by a collaboration of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)and the California Institute of Technology,” ScienceDaily reports. “What’s more, even better versions of this new glass may be on the way.”
“‘These results mark the first use of a new strategy for metallic glass fabrication and we believe we can use it to make glass that will be even stronger and more tough,” says Robert Ritchie, a materials scientist who led the Berkeley contribution to the research,” ScienceDaily reports. “The new metallic glass is a microalloy featuring palladium, a metal with a high ‘bulk-to-shear’ stiffness ratio that counteracts the intrinsic brittleness of glassy materials.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Computer! Computer? … Hello, computer? … Keyboard? How quaint.
McCoy: You realize that by giving him the formula you’re altering the future.
Scotty: Why? How do we know he didn’t invent the thing?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “ABQ Peter” for the heads up.]
Love the MDN take…
Did they crossbreed Liquidmetal with Gorillaglass?
Excellent MDN Take – exactly what I thought when I saw the headline!
(And it’s even an oblique tie-in to the Mac featured in that movie.)
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Transparent Aluminum
any whales missing?
This is basically another alloy like Liquidmetal.
Does everyone seems to have forgotten Apple has a perpetual exclusive license for LiquidMetal?
Read headline, clicked article to make transparent aluminum reference. MDN already on top of it.
(there be whales here)
Darn. I wanted to be the first to say “transparent aluminum.”
Best MDN take/photo in a long time!
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Ballmer quotes are still funnier, I don’t know how he does it.
At some point in the future, Apple will probably re-ignite the “translucent” device craze (that first made staplers and toasters look like the fruity iMacs). This time, they can injection-mode this super-glass directly around the mobile device components.
So, we know where these guys are getting their ideas from. StarTrek. First we spotted the iPad and PADD look alike and were both touch interfaced. (Voice is next you know.) Now it is “Transparent Aluminum”.
Maybe Steve Ballmer’s crew should get out the old episodes and dream a little.
The future looks bright. Soon we’ll have frictionless toilet surfaces at the molecular level. Can’t even stain it, just oozes down on its own. Flush with just a cup of water to keep the trap stable. Soon your keyboards will never get dirty, mouse pad get grungy, clothes stay clean forever!
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Read that in a book, can’t remember…
The next Apple mouse will be called the “Tribble”.
@ Jubei,
How unimaginative. In the future those turds will be transformed into gold nuggets or rare gemstones the millisecond they plop out of the ol’ poop-chute. And, it will smell like Chanel No.5.
imagine impact this will have on the architecture of buildings….
Captain! There be whales here!
@ AlcheMister
LOL… your right, gotta think further into the future!
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Can you tell me where I can find the nuclear wessles?
Geeks abound here.
Read the article? It uses palladium. Spot price of that is currently $811.00 per ounce. The only place you’re going to find this glass is in the windshield of the Aurora spy plane.
Silver is “cheaper” at $29.71 per ounce. But even so, this stuff won’t be in your iPhone anytime soon. It’s a good start from the Mat Sci perspective, but it’s years away from being available to mortals.
Palladium!?!</i?
Let’s see, today’s price for palladium of $809 per troy ounce works out to $11,800 per pound. If the alloy contains just 1% palladium (which it clearly isn’t), it alone would add $118 of cost to the manufacturer to make a pound of the alloy.
I see from the linked article that the rest of the constituents are cheap; that is, unless one wants something larger than 1 damned millimeter in diameter. If you do, all you do is add silver (“Oh… <i>that silly ol’ element; it’s only $29.69 per troy ounce.”)
The article is just some scientists at the U.S. Dept. of Energy trying to justify their fat salaries and absurd benefits.
Just read an article on CNET about this.
“Despite its name, the material is not transparent, notes Marios Demetriou, a senior research fellow at Caltech. The internal structure is the only glasslike thing about metallic glass.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20028318-1.html#ixzz1As44xKfb
It would have been nice if MDN had mentioned that, and not used the Star Trek/Transparent Aluminum reference.
First they say glass that is stronger than steel. Later they change and say metallic glass. So it’s not glass that is stronger than steel it’s metallic glass.
@Karlv
“Glass” just means that there is no crystal structure. “Metallic” essentially means there are free-conduction electrons that make it conduct electricity and heat. Up until the metallic glasses were invented, metals either had microscopic crystals, or they had macroscopic crystals, or they were single crystals (which are very strong bug brittle).
Most metallic glasses up to now behave just like the “glass” you and I think of: they are strong but lack ductility (that is, they are brittle).
The breakthrough here is they are using absurdly expensive palladium to produce an alloy that has no large-order crystal structure (it is a glass) but it exhibits plastic deformation at the micro-level, which makes it fracture resistant.
MDN neglected to mention that the photo (and the quotes) taken from the film, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), of Scotty using the computer, is none other than a Macintosh computer, after which he shows Dr. Nichols the formula for “Transparent Aluminum”.
Yet another example of Apple products, present or future, spookily using technology ideas that Star Trek once thought was science fiction.
Anyway, thanks MDN for one of my fav quotes from that film.
Since this is from Science Dumbly, I would take it with a pound of salt. They even have an article about the dangers of “third-hand-smoke.”
The Lawrence Berkeley Lab that they site has no mention of metallic glass on their website.
I am more impressed with the tablets used in 2001 on board the “Discovery”
A US Government Agency and a California State School doing R&D to benefit commerce- oh my! And we all thought the Commies went away after the Berlin Wall fell…
@Jersey_Trader:
Unfortunately, they apparently use Lost in Space for their inspirations.
I hate how the unacademic parrot press blasts out headlines “stronger than steel” without any numbers or context.
DH3 is a family of composite glasses in a dendritic structure to prevent crack propogation. It is an awesome glass technology.
But it is quite a stretch to call it “stronger” than steel — different alloys are designed for vastly different characteristics. DH3 glass may have impressive fatigue properties, but at a yield strength of ~1.2-1.5 GPa, it’s not quite up the the strongest steels that yield at ~1.6GPa.
… and seldom are consumer products optimized for strength or fatigue. They are typically designed for producibility and cost targets. From the manufacturer’s perspective, relatively low strength and fatigue limits are desireable. Breakage incentivizes the consumer to buy next year’s model.
@ neomonkey:
wrong you are.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/03/23/glass-you-can-build-with/