NCIE
   
 

Innovation

Scientists have created the strongest alloy known to mankind

According to the researchers, the new Pt-Au alloy is so resistant that if you make automobile tires out of it, you can travel around them 500 times completely, the length of which is 40075 km before they erase. Combinations of gold and platinum have been tested before, but the team from Sandia Laboratories went further than their predecessors. Using computer labs, they were able to compose material at the atomic level to make sure that its strength and stability reached peak levels.
“We are working with fundamental atomic mechanisms and microstructures, bringing it all together to understand why good performance is achieved or why productivity is ultimately bad, and then we develop an alloy that gives good performance,” says Michael Chandross, co-author a study describing the alloy.