Most metals oxidise, or rust, when exposed to air, which normally weakens them, but a kind of metallic glass instead gets more springy
By Alex Wilkins
28 December 2023
Tiny springs made from metallic glass Fucheng Li et al
Tiny tubes of rusty glass are surprisingly springy, which could prove useful in powering nanorobotic devices.
Most metals oxidise when left in the air – when this happens in iron, it is called rusting – which can change their properties, such as making them more brittle or less dense.
Yong Yang at City University of Hong Kong and his colleagues found that when they oxidised copper and zirconium nanotubes of metallic glass, which…
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