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Amorphous Metal

Materials Engineering

Amorphous metals, also called metallic glasses, are metallic alloys whose atoms freeze into a disordered, glass-like arrangement rather than the ordered crystal lattice of ordinary metals, while still keeping metallic conductivity and luster. Pol Duwez and Caltech colleagues Klement and Willens produced the first metallic glass, a gold-silicon alloy, in 1960 by cooling the melt extremely fast; Liebermann and Graham's 1976 melt-spinning technique made the material commercially practical, leading to Metglas products in the early 1980s, and a wave of bulk metallic glasses followed around 1990. Because the material has no grain boundaries, the weak points of ordinary crystalline metals, it resists wear and corrosion unusually well, and it is used in high-efficiency power-distribution transformer cores, electronic article-surveillance tags, automotive pressure sensors and specialized sporting goods. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Primary UseSourced to the subject's own account
High-efficiency power-distribution transformer cores; electronic article-surveillance and passive ID tags; automotive pressure sensors; specialized medical devices and sporting goods. 1
Origin YearSourced to the subject's own account
1960 1
Classification
Material ClassSourced to the subject's own account
Metal 1
Connections

Associated With

Electrical Engineering, Fields

Amorphous metal is used in electrical engineering applications (transformer cores, magnetic shielding), a second field beyond its primary materials-engineering field.

Glass, Materials

Amorphous metals are also called metallic glasses

Source Amorphous Metal (Wikipedia)
Nickel, Materials
Transformer, Inventions

Amorphous metal cores reduce eddy-current losses in electrical transformers versus ordinary silicon steel cores.

In Field

Sources
1. Amorphous Metal (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia
  • Properties section
    The absence of grain boundaries, the weak spots of crystalline materials, leads to better wear resistance and less corrosion.
  • material-class sentence
    Amorphous metals, also called metallic glasses, are metallic alloys whose atoms freeze into a disordered, glass-like arrangement rather than the ordered crystal lattice of ordinary metals, while still keeping metallic conductivity and luster.
  • Associated With: Metallurgical Engineering, Lead section
    Batches of amorphous steel with three times the strength of conventional steel alloys have been produced.
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