Most wear-resistant metal alloy in the world

If you're ever unlucky enough to have a car with metal tires, you might consider a set made from a new alloy engineered at Sandia National Laboratories. You could skid -- not drive, skid -- around Earth's equator 500 times before wearing out the tread.

Sandia's materials science team has engineered a platinum-gold alloy believed to be the most wear-resistant metal in the world. It's 100 times more durable than high-strength steel, making it the first alloy, or combination of metals, in the same class as diamond and sapphire, nature's most wear-resistant materials. Sandia's team recently reported their findings in Advanced Materials. "We showed there's a fundamental change you can make to some alloys that will impart this tremendous increase in performance over a broad range of real, practical metals," said materials scientist Nic Argibay, an author on the paper.

Although metals are typically thought of as strong, when they repeatedly rub against other metals, like in an engine, they wear down, deform and corrode unless they have a protective barrier, like additives in motor oil.