Researchers have created a new metallic glass that is stronger and lighter than some of the best steel, while standing up to corrosion and wear. A team from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Northwestern University used a new system at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) that combines machine learning with experiments that quickly make and screen hundreds of sample materials at a time. This allowed the researchers to discover three new blends of ingredients that form metallic glass about 200 times faster than before. While there are millions of possible combinations of ingredients for metallic glass, only a few thousand combinations have been evaluated in the last 50 years, with only a select few being developed to the point where they can be commercially useful. "It typically takes a decade or two to get a material from discovery to commercial use," Chris Wolverton, the Jerome B. Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering, said in a statement.