Liquidmetal Technologies Inc (LQMT)

[chipboarder]

The “healing” process must depend upon the re-establishment of crystalline bonds to make the micro-crack go away. This requires the fissure to be extremely narrow since the atoms in the structure aren’t mobile. To make the bonds happen the atoms would have to mimic the normal inter-atomic distances in the structure.

How could this relate to BMGs??? Amorphous alloys have no crystalline structure and behave more like mixtures so I don’t see the opportunity to mend broken bonds but that implies “nothing to break = nothing to fix”.. Not sure but it may point to better fatigue resistance for non-crystalline materials but I seem to recall testing of BMG fatigue resistance where they came up short.

I also remember that if you take 2 pieces of steel and polish them to a “super flat” mirror finish, they will adhere to each other when the polished surfaces are placed in contact.