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Incredible Metals: Why is Platinum Called the Most Malleable Metal?
In materials science, ductility is an important measure of a material's ability to withstand significant plastic deformation before fracture. This property is critical in engineering and manufacturing, especially applications that require materials to bend, stretch or deform without breaking. Ductility not only affects the choice of materials, but also plays a key role in many high-tech applications. Based on the deformation length of the material after fracture during the test, ductility can be calculated by subtracting the initial length from the length after fracture, dividing by the initial length, and then multiplying by 100%.
Ductility is the ability of a material to sustain deformation in the face of stress and is critical to safe operation.
Platinum is widely considered to be the most ductile of all metals. When tested for ductility, platinum stretches to a degree unmatched by other metals. This is because platinum's special metal bonding structure allows it to have greater atomic sliding ability when subjected to stress, thereby achieving higher ductility. Many precious metals, such as gold and copper, also exhibit considerable ductility, but platinum is still unique in this regard.
Importance of scalabilityDuctility not only affects the processing characteristics of metals, but also determines their suitability for certain applications. For example, casting or hot forming processes primarily use brittle materials, whereas in metal forming operations, highly ductile materials are able to withstand impacts without breaking. The presence of ductility allows the metal to undergo cold working operations such as pressing or etching without cracking.
High ductility enables the metal to absorb more energy during deformation, thus providing better safety.
Measurement and quantification of ductility
In tensile testing, the ductility of a material is usually quantified using relative elongation (as a percentage) and the reduction in area at fracture. Take elongation at break as an example. This is the engineering strain at which the test specimen breaks in a uniaxial tension test. The ductility of some metals, such as steel, varies with the alloy composition; generally, increasing carbon content decreases ductility.
Brittle and ductile transition of metals
Metals may exhibit different fracture behaviors at different temperatures: brittle fracture or ductile fracture. The ductility of a material is inextricably linked to its toughness, especially in metal products that are used for load-bearing applications.
The transition between ductility and brittleness usually occurs at a certain temperature, the so-called brittle-ductile transition temperature.
Research by the Montreal Form Metals Association indicates that platinum performs extremely well at this transition point, greatly reducing the risk of brittle fracture. This makes platinum widely used in various high-end industrial and laboratory environments.
Closing Thoughts
As research and development of new materials continues to advance, will we see other metals break platinum's ductility record to meet greater technological challenges in the future?
