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Apple acquired a real gem. I hope they don't just sit on the IP for their own use, this material can make many other great products. Liquidmetal alloys achieve
by hop 16y ago
Apple acquired a real gem. I hope they don't just sit on the IP for their own use, this material can make many other great products.
Liquidmetal alloys achieved yield strength of over 1723 MPa, nearly twice the strength of conventional crystalline titanium alloys.
That's some material science porn, liquid metal products can use a fraction the amount of material to achieve the same strength as other metals. This will be great for bikes, electric cars, knives, all types of springs, spaceships, hammers, more efficient engines, those desktop swinging balls... Breakthroughs like this don't happen often.
- qwzybug 16y agoAmorphous, highly elastic materials (glass comes to mind) are often not great for long-wearing designs like bicycles. At least to present, amorphous metals wear more like glass or carbon fibre than steel: invisible structural damage leads to quick catastrophic failure. Rather than dings you get severed seat tubes and exploding wheels. For the time being, no one's invented anything better than cro-moly steel for the good old bicycle. It does sound like an utterly fascinating material, however. The slow, glass-like viscosity curve would be an amazing property to play with.
- hop 16y agoYeah, I was thinking more for componentry. Won't replace carbon fiber composite frames.
- fuzzythinker 16y agoAccording to the article, Apple got exclusive rights to electronics usage only, so while Apple may be doing harm to hamper new electronics usage of it, most of the stuff you mentioned should still be open to be licensed by other companies.
- limmeau 16y agoI used to have a Sandisk Sansa e270, which was supposed to have a LiquidMetal backplate. I wasn't impressed; to me, it appeared to be just another dull grey metal alloy. But then, I'm not a metallurgist.