(MIT: Cambridge, MA) -- Titanium alloys are essential structural materials for a wide variety of applications, from aerospace and energy infrastructure to biomedical equipment. But like most metals, optimizing their properties tends to involve a tradeoff between two key characteristics: strength and ductility. Stronger materials tend to be less deformable, and deformable materials tend to be mechanically weak.

Now researchers at MIT, collaborating with researchers at ATI Specialty Materials, have discovered an approach for creating new titanium alloys that can exceed this historical tradeoff, leading to new alloys with exceptional combinations of strength and ductility that might lead to new applications.

The findings are described in the journal Advanced Materials, in a paper by Shaolou Wei, Professor C. Cem Tasan, postdoc Kyung-Shik Kim, and John Foltz from ATI Inc. The improvements, the team says, arise from tailoring the chemical composition and the lattice structure of the alloy while also adjusting the processing techniques used to produce the material at industrial scale.

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