REAL LIFE NEWS: NEW SUPER-HARD METAL ALLOY COULD BE USED TO MAKE MEDICAL IMPLANTS
by Hazed
Physicists in the US have melted together titanium and gold to create an alloy which is the hardest known metallic substance that’s compatible with living tissue.
Four times harder than titanium, the new alloy has applications in making longer-lasting medical implants. Currently, knee and hip implants wear out after about 10 years and have to be replaced.
Professor Emilia Morosan from Rice University, Houston, and her team discovered the new alloy while working on unconventional magnets made from titanium and gold. Their work involved grinding the new materials to a powder to check their purity, but they found that this particular alloy was too tough to be ground in a diamond-coated mortar and pestle.
Prof Morosan said that 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”.
She added that there could also be applications in the drilling industry and the sporting goods industry, as well as many other potential fields.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36855705
