Wednesday, August 11, 2010 3:00 pm40 Comments

“In a move that promises a future of higher performance, cheaper and more elegant iPhone, Macbook and desktop casings, Apple has signed an exclusive deal with Liquidmetal Technologies, a company that makes a special metallic glass,” Stuart Fox reports for TechNewsDaily.

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“Liquidmetal Technologies produces an amorphous metal called Vitreloy, which is primarily composed of zircon,” Fox reports. “Used mainly for sporting equipment so far, the company has also produced components of cell phone cases in the past, said William Johnson, former vice chairman of technology at Liquidmetal Technologies, professor of materials science at Caltech and inventor of Vitreloy. ‘The material is durable, hard, scratch resistant, and can be processed thermo-plastically at relatively low temperature,’ Johnson told TechNewsDaily.”

Fox reports, “Vitreloy ‘tends to be lighter than steel, a bit heavier than titanium. You can produce complex, three dimensional shapes pretty well.’ By replacing the current metal and plastic cases with Vitreloy, Apple can drastically increase the toughness of their products while reducing the weight.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Rumor has it that a UFP chief engineer named Montgomery Scott just sort of appeared one day and gave Liquidmetal the formula in exchange for a plexiglass whale tank.