Believe it:
This stuff is TOUGH
carbon steel can be made extremely hard. I have a hard time believing this stuff is harder than that.
Get it down to about -300 kelvin and you can get it very strong.
Believe it:
This stuff is TOUGH
Carbon steel can’t be injection molded into precision parts needing little or no further processing before use.
And, carbon steel has nowhere near the elasticity of these amorphous alloys. iPad, iPhone, and laptop cases made of this material will be practically indestructible, More to the point, they won’t scratch, dent, or lose their lustre.
The article referred to the alloy being harder than stainless steel, which isn’t a difficult goal to achieve. Stainless isn’t that hard when we compare it to tool steels which would be Rc of 60 or higher.
Many stainless alloys scratch pretty easily when confronted with some grit.
Truth is, that many things are harder, many things are tougher, many things are more stain resistant. Carbon steel is strong, and relatively inexpensive and that is its greatest property. Yet, the hardness of carbon steel depends alot on the amount of carbon and the heat treatment history.
Steel can be effectively "soft" as "butter" when annealed and fairly low carbon.. like .15% or less. But in this form it is tough and takes a pounding and is relatively strong compared to metals like copper or brass or even cast iron. More carbon and you have the possibility of harder, stonger, but at some small sacrifice of toughness. At about .45% you get the stuff that inexpensive chisels and tools can be made but it becomes less suitable for i-beams and such.
Titanium is much harder than steel, stainless and still quite ductile and resistant to cracking and fatigue if designed properly, but it is heck to weld. Titanium is also quite light making it a favorite for the aircraft industry.
So, this is a case of the world of "it depends."
One supposes that these "liquid" metals are very much like glass, liquid at room temperature but solid for all intents and purposes. The value being that unlike glass, metals have the possibility of more ductility such that they might not be as brittle as glass.
Typically hard and brittle go together.
Check out the Wikipedia article on Liquidmetal. Impressive stuff. Apparently what Apple bought wasn’t so much the concept of these alloys, which has been around for a while, but a way to mass-manufacture and cast them cheaply.
Carbon steel = hard + brittle + rusts
Amorphous alloys = hard + tough + corrosion resistant