Researchers have developed an unlikely candidate that tops steel in strength and toughness – a metallic glass they say is the most damage-resistant material in existence.
“Strength is hardness of materials, toughness is resistance to fracture,” said Robert Ritchie, the materials scientist who led the team at the U.S. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in a joint research project with the California Institute of Technology. “In most materials, those properties are mutually exclusive. Hard materials tend to be prone to fracture, and soft materials tend to be less likely to fracture,” according to a Feb. 24 Medill Reports article.
