Materials scientists have long sought to form glass from pure, mono-atomic metals and now modern day alchemists have done exactly that!
"This is a fundamental issue explored by people in this field for a long time, but nobody could solve the problem. People believed that it could be done, and now we're able to show that it is possible," said Scott X Mao, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Pittsburgh.
Metallic glasses are unique in that their structure is not crystalline (as it is in most metals), but rather is disordered, with the atoms randomly arranged.
They are sought for various commercial applications because they are very strong and are easily processed.
Mao's novel method of creating metallic glass involved developing and implementing a new technique - a cooling nano-device under in-situ transmission electron microscope.
The method enabled him and his colleagues to achieve an unprecedentedly high cooling rate that allowed for the transformation of liquefied elemental metals tantalum and vanadium into glass.
The research was published in the journal Nature.
