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Glassy Aluminum Alloys
| Article
# : |
18053 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1990 |
2,610 Words |
| Author
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G.J. Shiflet
G.J. Shiflet is a professor of materials science at the
University of Virginia in Charlottesville. |
Glassy aluminum alloys. The name itself is attractive. We know about glass and we know about aluminum. But what would glassy aluminum. But what would glassy aluminum be? The word alloy gets lost. We want to know if there is now a metal we can see through.
In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, whales are brought from the twentieth to the twenty-third century in a "tank" constructed of a tough, lightweight material called "transparent aluminum." Did the writers of Star Trek successfully predict a breakthrough of materials science that is now coming to pass?
Research on glassy aluminum alloys is part of the larger class of research on glassy metal alloys, a field that has been active for more than 30 years. In this time, an enormous variety of liquid metals have been transformed into metallic glass. However, until recently none was based on aluminum - and none was transparent.
A lightweight glassy metal alloy has been sought by metallurgists for decades because in theory, such a material could be as strong as high-grade steel but much lighter. Because aluminum is the lightest-weight workable metal, it was the natural choice as the preferred primary component of the alloy. Yet prior to 1988, the quest for a metallic glass rich in aluminum with high strength coupled with ductility (i.e., not brittle) was losing its allure. The possibilities for finding a glassy aluminum alloy seemed more and more remote.
Then in 1988, two separate and independent groups in the United States and Japan made nearly identical discoveries of glassy aluminum alloys
... (1992 of 16591 Characters)
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