Amorphous Alloy Surpasses Steel and Titanium

In the same way that the inventions of steel in the 1800s and plastic in the 1900s sparked revolutions for industry, a new class of amorphous alloys is poised to redefine materials science as we know it in the 21st century. Welcome to the 3rd Revolution, otherwise known as the era of Liquidmetal(R) alloys, where metals behave similar to plastics but possess more than twice the strength of high performance titanium. Liquidmetal alloys were conceived in 1992, as a result of a project funded by the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), NASA, and the U.S. Department of Energy, to study the fundamentals of metallic alloys in an undercooled liquid state, for the development of new aerospace materials. Furthermore, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center contributed to the development of the alloys by subjecting the materials to testing in its Electrostatic Levitator, a special instrument that is capable of suspending an object in midair so that researchers can heat and cool it in a containerless environment free from contaminants that could otherwise spoil the experiment.