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Amorphous metals have a disordered atomic structure and are also known as metallic glasses. They can be twice as thick as regular metal and are ideal for military armor due to their resistance to corrosion and wear. They were first created in 1957 by cooling an alloy in milliseconds. Amorphous metal suitable for commercialization was first produced in 1976 for low-loss power distribution transformers, reducing CO2 emissions and saving energy. The critical cooling rate was reduced in the 1980s, making bulk metallic glasses more feasible. In 2004, amorphous steel was produced in bulk, paving the way for wider commercialization.
An amorphous metal is a metal with a disordered atomic structure, unlike most metals, which have a regular structure. These substances are also called metallic glasses, because one way of making amorphous metals resembles the procedure for making glass, but using the metal instead of silica. Studies indicate that amorphous metals can be more than twice as thick as regular metal and are ideal for military armor, weighing the same as ordinary metal. Due to the messy structure of the material, it is also more resistant to corrosion and wear.
Amorphous metals were first created at Caltech by Pol Duwez in 1957. Duwez created amorphous metal by cooling an alloy (Au80Si20) from a liquid state in less than a fraction of a second. The cooling rate had to exceed one million Kelvin degrees per second, so the cooling of the metal from liquid to solid state had to take place in milliseconds. The cooling quickly prevented the metal from crystallizing like a typical metal, giving it its unique amorphous structure. At first, the shapes of the amorphous metal were limited, consisting mainly of thin strips, foils and wires. These constraints were imposed by the need for a rapid cooling rate.
The amorphous metal suitable for commercialization was first produced in 1976 by C. Graham and H. Liebermann. They used a supercooled fast-spinning wheel to create large quantities of amorphous metal suitable for low-loss power distribution transformers, marketed under the Metglas name. The amorphous metal can be magnetized and demagnetized rapidly, resulting in energy savings when used in power grid transformers. 70-80% less energy is consumed by amorphous metal transformers, reducing CO2 emissions and saving energy. Today, amorphous metal transformers are used extensively in India and China, where they have been used to successfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Throughout the 1980s, materials scientists experimented with different alloys to reduce the cooling rate needed to create amorphous metals. They succeeded in reducing the critical cooling rate from hundreds of Kelvins per second to just one Kelvin per second, making the production of bulk metallic glasses more feasible. In 2004, researchers succeeded in producing amorphous steel in bulk, paving the way for wider commercialization of the material.
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