Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
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: 4, Interesting) by fritsd on Monday July 25 2016, @08:22PM
The ore is so cheap they use it in white paint and toothpaste (TiO2, rutile, titanium dioxide).
I was once given a tour in a washing powder factory. They had a glass display case where they proudly presented next to each other: cheap washing powder, and cheap tooth paste :-) that made me think about why cheap toothpaste is always so foamy :-)
But the hardness of Titanium metal makes it very expensive to manipulate and form.
How on earth did they *make* that sheet that that machinist gave you??
Eugh.. I just read the Wiki page on how they reduce Titanium ore to Titanium metal. Do Not Try This At Home [wikipedia.org]!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @08:33PM
cheap tooth paste :-) that made me think about why cheap toothpaste is always so foamy :-)
Oh I was summoned !!!
The main source behind the foam in cheap tooth paste is sodium lauryl sulfate SMILE{CCCCCCCCCCCCOS(=O)([O-])=O.[Na+]}
Sorry for being late
The tooth paste troll :-)