Material engineers from the Sandia National Laboratories have created an incredible alloy. While it may seem quite simple as you only need 9 parts platinum and 1 part gold to create it is the very first alloy that is comparable to diamonds or sapphires when it comes to durability.
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The interseting fact is that this alloy isn’t actually that new. It has just been somewhat overlooked by material scientists. Most of the material research is currently focusing on create extremely strong alloys or alloys that are strong and very light at the same time. And the platinum/gold alloy has is actually quite brittle. But when it comes to friction it is incredibly durable. The scientists for example said if you had a tire made from the alloy you could drift five hundred times around the Earth before you would need to replace them.
Usually, we consider metals to be quite strong. But when they become part of a mechanism where a metal is constantly in friction with another metal they wear off over time, get deformed, corrode and just stop being functional. The only thing that prevents that is some form of a protective layer. In large machines this if performed by some form of lubrication, but that is not really usable at really tine scales – like in electronics. There we usually use a layer of gold or other rare metals. But this protection is quite expensive and even it wears off over time and because you use a very thin layer of protection, the time is actually quite limited.
But the new platinum/gold alloy is different. It can be used as an incredibly thin layer that lasts very long. The researchers say that the use of this alloy could save the electronic industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And the products would be more durable and of higher quality.
Sources:
- https://www.theengineer.co.uk/wear-resistant-alloy-platinum-gold/
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.201802026
