Materials

Hardening up: New alloy four times as tough as titanium

Emilia Morosan (right) led the study that uncovered the tough new material
Jeff Fitlow/Rice University
Emilia Morosan (right) led the study that uncovered the tough new material
Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

A chance discovery in a physics lab at Rice University has turned up an ultra-hard material that could usurp the titanium commonly used in today's knee and hip replacements. Scientists have found that by melting gold into the titanium mix they can produce a non-toxic metal that is four times harder than titanium itself, raising the prospect of more durable, longer lasting medical implants.

Emilia Morosan, a professor of physics at Rice University, was carrying out experiments on a magnetic material made from nonmagnetic elements, more specifically, a titanium-gold mix with a one-to-one ratio. Part of her team's process in developing new compounds like this one is to grind it up into powder so that it can be X-rayed, which helps them identify things like its composition, structure and purity.

"When we tried to grind up titanium-gold, we couldn't," she says. "I even bought a diamond-coated mortar and pestle, and we still couldn't grind it up."

It proved a tough nut to crack, but Morosan and her team carried out a series of tests to work out how hard this compound really was, along with a few other titanium-gold compounds that had been used as comparisons in their earlier work. Part of this mix was one alloy containing three parts titanium to one part gold, which had been formed at high temperature.

Preparing the compound at high temperatures, as it turns out, creates an almost purely crystalline form of the beta version of the alloy, with four times the hardness of titanium. The researchers point out that the compound is actually not a new one, nor is it difficult to make, but they are the first to come across its impressive properties.

They say that the reason for this is the high temperature at which they had cooked up the material. When prepared at lower temperatures, they say they atoms arrange themselves in a cubic structure as the alpha form of the so-called titanium-3-gold, with a hardness similar to regular titanium. It seems, therefore, the scientists that had previously assessed its hardness were working with materials consisting of this alpha arrangement of atoms.

"[Beta titanium-3 gold] is about three to four times harder than most steels," says Morosan. "It's four times harder than pure titanium, which is what's currently being used in most dental implants and replacement joints."

The researchers say that material could lend itself particularly well to use in medical implants, as it is made of titanium and gold, which are up there with the more biocompatible materials and are commonly used for that reason. But testing showed their titanium-3-gold to be even more biocompatible and wear-resistant than pure titanium. They the team is exploring whether treating it with chemicals can make it even harder again.

The research was published in the journal Science Advances.

Source: Rice University

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10 comments
habakak
Good thing gold is so cheap and abundant....
gizmowiz
Man then you better not be cremated and let the ash man have access to the gold contents as that would be a lucrative business indeed!
fb36
In the first Iron Man movie it was said that the suit is made of Titanium-Gold alloy! :-)
notarichman
use the alloy in drill bits???
Bob Stuart
This would usually be called an alloy, not a compound. Hardness and toughness are usually mutually exclusive, making this a very spectacular headline that totally fizzles out. Without numbers for A: Tensile Strength, B: Stiffness, C: Toughness, and D: Density, you have not described a metal. Alloys usually achieve little change in stiffness. Given the similarities to the hardening of steel, we need news about cooling rates, etc. as well. Didn't English majors meet any other kinds of people to help them write?
abedavid
Titanium has very slight toxicity and gold doesn't have any,but although very unlikely for there to be any problem , the chemical safety of the combination should be tested.
Greg17
An intermetallic compound has defined stoichiometry and structure, that is somewhat different to an alloy. However, hardness isn't the same as toughness, and the headline is totally inappropriate.
Siegfried Gust
It's fairly suspicious when a discovery that touts a materials newly discovered hardness properties doesn't give any actual hardness values.
rebuttals
Here's the link to the source document describing the research on the 3:1 titanium-gold alloy...
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/7/e1600319.full
Noel K Frothingham
I have a titanium rod running hip to ankle in my left leg. My daughter once suggested that when I die, they' d take me to Southern Recycling first.