Liquid Metal? In A Watch?

Yes. In a watch. Not just any watch, but an Omega.

In any case, watch. I mean the video at that link, and you’ll love the slogan: “Sometimes, the most unlikely partnerships are the most enduring.” And I guess we could add, “the most expensive.”

Here’s the short description from that page on the bulk metallic glass that goes by its trade name “Liquidmetal®”:

Liquidmetal®: seamless bonding, remarkable hardness

The Liquidmetal® alloy is an amorphous metal – a metallic material with a disordered, non-crystalline atomic structure. Its fusion temperature is half that of conventional titanium alloys but when it is cooled, its hardness is three times as great as that of stainless steel. Its amorphous structure allows it to bond seamlessly with the ceramic bezel.

The Liquidmetal® is a bulk metallic glass alloy consisting of five elements: zirconium, titanium, copper, nickel and beryllium. A bulk metallic glass can, by virtue of its low critical cooling rate, be formed into a structure with a thickness of more than a tenth of a millimetre. Zirconium is an important constituent part both of the Liquidmetal® alloy and of the ceramic material which is made of zirconium dioxide (Zr02).

Thanks for the pointer to my friend and colleague Ram (Prof. U. Ramamurty), who is well known for his studies of mechanical behaviour of bulk metallic glasses.

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BTW, this blog has had a chance to post about Liquidmetal® sometime ago.