It's more resistant than average glass

Mar 18, 2009 09:19 GMT  ·  By
The left-hand structure is made up of titanium and zirconium, while the righ-hand one is made of stainless steel - note the differences that make the first one tougher
   The left-hand structure is made up of titanium and zirconium, while the righ-hand one is made of stainless steel - note the differences that make the first one tougher

Titanium is best known for being one of the toughest materials out there, but no one could have imagined that it would end up being used to replace glass, in applications that demand strong and transparent materials. The zirconium chemical element will also be used together with titanium, and will eventually replace stainless steel and aluminum in almost all aspects of technology, such as golf clubs and airplanes. The applications are endless, as the newly-obtained structure is both harder and tougher than that of steel.

“The problem with most [types of] glass is that they have very bad fatigue resistance,” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researcher Maximilien Launey, who has worked together with Douglas Hofmann, William Johnson, and Robert Ritchie for the new research, explains. Their finds are detailed and published in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper also holds that the new material weighs much less than its counterparts, which means that it can be likened to carbon fiber, which has replaced aluminum as being stronger and tougher than the previously-used material.

The main issue that average glass has is that it lacks a very clear and uniform crystalline structure, a problem that the new titanium-zirconium alloy seems to fix. Also, another weak point of normal glass, in which atoms are not evenly distributed across the surface, seems to have been solved as well, because the new one has a very uniform structure and all regions of the material appear to show the same atom density and disposition. That is to say, it may be possible that the transparent titanium will not break altogether if a tiny crack occurs in its surface, as it happens with average glass.

“This is a major accomplishment. One big advantage is that it can be cast right to shape. Just pour it into a mold, let it freeze, and you have properties that are comparable to high-strength steel right from the get-go,” Stanford University expert William Nix says of the new glass. “We could make an airplane out of metallic glass. But the problem is always the same. Processing these materials is kind of expensive,” Launey adds.

The new material also has a lower melting point than steel, which means that it may be even faster and cheaper to produce in large quantities. Applications in which it could be used are virtually endless, and one might even ponder the idea of a transparent building. It remains to be seen if the production process will be refined enough to further decrease costs, so as to make it commercially feasible.