An Alloy of Iron and Aluminium Is as Good as Titanium, at a Tenth of the Cost
8th February 2015
To a chemist, an alloy is a mixture of materials rather than a true chemical compound. But metals do sometimes react to form real compounds, and one class of these, known as B2 intermetallic compounds (which have equal numbers of atoms of two different metals within them), lies at the heart of Dr Kim’s invention. The nickel reacts with some of the aluminium to create B2 crystals a few nanometres across. These crystals form both between and within the steel’s grains when it is annealed (a form of heat treatment).