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A super-hard metal has been made in the laboratory by melting together titanium and gold.
The alloy is the hardest known metallic substance compatible with living tissues, say US physicists.
The material is four times harder than pure titanium and has applications in making longer-lasting medical implants, they say.
Conventional knee and hip implants have to be replaced after about 10 years due to wear and tear.
Details of the new metal - an alloy of gold and titanium - are revealed in the journal, Science Advances.
Prof Emilia Morosan, of Rice University, Houston, said her team had made the discovery while working on unconventional magnets made from titanium and gold.
The new materials needed to be made into powders to check their purity, but beta-Ti3Au, as it is known, was too tough to be ground in a diamond-coated mortar and pestle.
The material "showed the highest hardness of all Ti-Au [titanium-gold] alloys and compounds, but also compared to many other engineering alloys", said Prof Morosan.
She said the hardness of the substance, together with its higher biocompatibility, made it a "next generation compound for substantively extending the lifetime of dental implants and replacement joints".
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36855705
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday July 25 2016, @08:21PM
I got a set of titanium eating utensils, partly out of curiosity and partly in hopes I could persuade my significant other to ditch the plastic she prefers over stainless steel. Quit wasting money on plastic. I wondered if her objection to stainless steel and love of plastic might be simply the weight. The latter hope was only partly realized.
They're very expensive, about $20 for one spoon, fork, and knife. Titanium makes for a good combination of lightweight yet strong, and corrosion resistant and non-toxic. Quite a few brands of titanium utensils. They make them for camping, going for the lightest possible weight. Designed them as slim as they could. I checked. There's a fair bit of variation, but a typical spoon is about 25g in stainless steel, 17g in titanium, and 6g in plastic.
One bad property is the marks the titanium knife leaves in ceramic plates if you aren't careful and saw at food a little too enthusiastically. While it doesn't make a scratch that can be felt, it leaves a silvery mark that just will not come out. Need a light touch to avoid that.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Tuesday July 26 2016, @01:09AM
Personally, I hate the metal taste of steel silverware.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @07:07AM
Have you tried to remove the marks with an acid?
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday July 26 2016, @08:01AM
Just thinking out of the box - but have you tried introducing her to chopsticks? (I prefer them over forks simply because they have a much nicer motion for the hand)
Or for that matter - tried utensils with a different material in the handle? I grew up with utensils with bakelite handles and still prefers them - unless the utensils are properly weighted. (When I switched to all steel utensils it took me feeling about 40 different designs before I found a comfortable set - I want my forks insanely light and my knives with their center of gravity outside the cutting area (my current knives naturally falls "backwards" when I relax my hands - thereby reducing effort to handle then))
Yes, I often eat western food with chopsticks and knife.