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Feb 27, 2025

Superelastic titanium alloy has potential for space missions

Shaolou Wei is in the Department of Microstructure Physics and Alloy Design at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials, Düsseldorf 40237, Germany. You can also search for this author in

Shaolou Wei is in the Department of Microstructure Physics and Alloy Design at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials, Düsseldorf 40237, Germany.

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Dierk Raabe is in the Department of Microstructure Physics and Alloy Design at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials, Düsseldorf 40237, Germany.

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Nearly all metals can be strengthened, yet it is a struggle to make them stretch or bend flexibly and reversibly like rubber. Why? When a metal is stretched, defects form in its crystal lattice and thereby dissipate the strain energy (the energy stored from applied stress). This limits the amount of deformation that can be recovered (the recoverable strain) to less than 0.5% and causes permanent shape change. Metals are therefore good at permanently retaining their shape and are resistant to breaking, but they are not suitable for applications in which a material cycles through large shape changes. Writing in Nature, Song et al.1 report an impressive lightweight titanium alloy that has high mechanical strength and yet recovers strain of more than 5% across an extensive temperature range — with potential applications for biomedical devices, energy infrastructure and space exploration.

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Nature 638, 896-897 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00301-1

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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