Metallic glasses are new type of glass that are extremely strong, hard, and resistant to wear and corrosion, all of which make them good potential candidates for engineering uses, including electronics casings, and medical uses such as surgical pins and stents. Metallic glass can withstand heavy impacts without deforming – even when pushed beyond its elastic limits, it doesn’t fracture, instead retaining most of its original strength. That makes it potentially useful in a variety of applications from drill bits to body armor for soldiers to meteor-resistant casings for satellites .
Most metals crystallize as they cool, arranging their atoms into a highly regular spatial pattern called a lattice. However when glass is cooled from a liquid to a solid, it does not crystallize. Under certain conditions, metal can also form as a glass with the atoms settling into a nearly random arrangement, like when metal is rapidly cooled to a solid state. Metallic glass or Bulk metal glasses (BMGs, for short) are formed when metal and metal alloys are subjected to extreme heat and then rapidly cooled – exciting their atoms into disorganized arrangements, and then freezing them there.
NASA has found that hardened bulk metallic glass foam may be very useful as a material for building future spacecraft for long-term space flight. The foams can also be used to build permanent structures on the Moon or Mars. Buildings and spacecraft fuselages made from bulk metallic glass foams can be extremely tough and light at the same time, thereby reducing costs while increasing the protection they provide to explorers. as well as for potential shielding against micrometeorites and space debris impacts on spacecraft.
China is a major producer of metallic glasses, second only to the United States, according to mainland media reports.
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