Titanium is strong and lightweight, boasting the highest strength to weight ratio of any structural metal. But processing it while maintaining a good balance of strength and ductility – the ability of a metal to be drawn out without breaking – is challenging and expensive. A team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered the use of a technique called cryo-forging to manipulate pure titanium on the scale of a billionth of a meter (a nanometer) at ultra-low temperatures to produce extra-strong “nanotwinned” titanium without sacrificing any of its ductility.
Click here to read the full article.