Engineering ceramics are hard to beat on the strength scale. They are scratch resistant and difficult to bend, Still, they suffer from a tendency to brittleness. However, a group of researchers from Caltech, Lawrence Berkeley Nat Labs & University of California, report in a new paper in Nature Materials (doi:10.1038/nmat2930) that they have found a new composition for a highly damage-tolerant metallic glass. Testing indicates it is tougher and stronger than nickel and titanium alloys, and apparently is the toughest, strongest material ever made. Furthermore, the group gained enough insights to give it confidence that even more damage-resistant materials are possible. However, there is one drawback - the gasses are phenomenally expensive to make. "We can only make them in small quantities, so this is going to be an immature field for quite some time," said ACerS Fellow, Rob Ritchie, a professor at UC.
