New technique builds super-hard metals from nanoparticles

Metallurgists have all kinds of ways to make a chunk of metal harder. They can bend it, twist it, run it between two rollers or pound it with a hammer. These methods work by breaking up the metal's grain structure—the microscopic ...

New glass tops steel in strength and toughness

(PhysOrg.com) -- 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 ...

Stronger than steel, novel metals are moldable as plastic

(PhysOrg.com) -- Imagine a material that's stronger than steel, but just as versatile as plastic, able to take on a seemingly endless variety of forms. For decades, materials scientists have been trying to come up with just ...

Atomic trigger shatters mystery of how glass deforms

Throw a rock through a window made of silica glass, and the brittle, insulating oxide pane shatters. But whack a golf ball with a club made of metallic glass—a resilient conductor that looks like metal—and the glass not ...

In probing mysteries of glass, researchers find a key to toughness

Glass doesn't have to be brittle. Scientists propose a way of predicting whether a given glass will be brittle or ductile—a property typically associated with metals like steel or aluminum—and assert that any glass could ...

Study reveals ordinary glass's extraordinary properties

Researchers at the universities of Chicago and Wisconsin-Madison raise the possibility of designing ultrastable glasses at the molecular level via a vapor-deposition process. Ultrastable glasses could find potential applications ...

Cracking a controversial solid state mystery

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists can easily explain the structural order that makes steel and aluminium out of molten metal. And they have discovered the molecular changes that take place as water turns to ice. But, despite the ...

In metallic glasses, researchers find a few new atomic structures

Drawing on powerful computational tools and a state-of-the-art scanning transmission electron microscope, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison and Iowa State University materials science and engineering researchers has ...

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