Metal Foam Has a Good Memory

The porous nature of nickel-manganese-gallium alloy gives it "shape-memory" properties. The material lengthens, or strains, up to 10 percent when subjected to a magnetic field. The NSF-funded researchers believe the porous alloy has great potential for uses that require light weight and a large strain, such as space and automotive applications and tiny motion control devices or biomedical pumps with no moving parts. Credit: P. Müllner and M. Chmelius, Boise State University, and D. Dunand and Y. Boonyoungmaneerat, Northwestern University