Metal aesthetics of metallic jewelry. Some metals have specialized uses; mercury is a liquid at room temperature and is used in switches to complete a circuit when it flows over the switch contacts. Radioactive metals such as uranium and plutonium are used in nuclear power plants to produce energy via nuclear fission. Shape memory alloys are used for applications such as pipes, fasteners and vascular stents. Metals can be doped with foreign molecules—organic, inorganic, biological and polymers. This doping entails the metal with new properties that are induced by the guest molecules. Applications in catalysis, medicine, electrochemical cells, corrosion and more
Liquid metal embrittlement rate sensitive. Temperature also affects the kinetics of LME. An increase in strain rate increases the upper limit temperature as well as the crack propagation rate. In most metal couples LME does not occur below a threshold stress level. Testing typically involves tensile specimens but more sophisticated testing using fracture mechanics specimens is also performed. Many theories have been proposed for LME. The major ones are listed below; All of these models, with the exception of Robertson, utilize the concept of an adsorption-induced surface energy lowering of the solid metal as the central cause of LME. They have succeeded in