Arnie Bruce-Cooper reports on a recent development in high-strength glass:
In the world of materials, strength (the amount of force a substance can withstand) and toughness (its capacity to resist fracturing) are not merely different attributes; they’re very difficult to achieve together. Now a collaboration of researchers from Caltech and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has created a form of glass that has both qualities. It’s stronger and tougher than steel or, indeed, any other known material. The material features palladium, a metal whose possible use in glasses was recognized 45 years ago.
[. . .]
The work is outlined in a study published this week in the journal Nature Materials. Marios Demetriou, a professor at Caltech and lead author of the paper, says the work involved finding a particularly strong version of the simplest form of glass, called marginal glass, and then turning it into the even stronger form known as bulk glass.
“What we did here is find a very, very tough marginal glass made of palladium with small fractions of metalloids like phosphorus, silicon, and germanium, which yielded one-millimeter-thick samples. And we just said, let’s add very little of something that will make it bulk without making it brittle,” says Demetriou. By adding 3.5 percent silver to this marginal glass, Demetriou was able to increase the thickness to six millimeters while maintaining its toughness.
H/T to Virginia Postrel for the link.
