Materials: Metallic glasses: Researchers are grappling with novel production techniques that would revolutionize transformer manufacturing

For two decades, researchers have been investigating metallic glasses , materials that can be magnetized easily and that have remarkably low magnetic losses. But mass-producing the glasses , or amorphous metals, as they are also called - requires the development of a totally new technology, and this has held back their large-scale applications. They are produced continuously in ribbons 20 to 50 micrometers thick, or about one tenth the thickness of the standard laminated steel used today in transformer cores [Fig. 1]. They are harder and also more sensitive to mechanical stresses than steel. Thus, novel transformer manufacturing techniques must be developed.