Metallic glass , the next disruptive material for Future Space and Military applications, coming of Age

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.