Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) bet on Liquidmetal about to pay off?

iPod maker made a deal with the company in 2010 to secure exclusive worldwide rights to use the alloy in consumer electronics products Apple Inc.

Stock Forum) loves to think of lucrative new uses for other people's bright ideas. For instance, the original iPod wouldn't have been possible without Toshiba's innovative 1.8-inch hard drive. And when Steve Jobs learned about Gorilla Glass in 2006, he convinced Corning to revive the largely unused technology so Apple could put it in the iPhone. So it's no surprise that Apple has been toying with yet another breakthrough technology. It's called Liquidmetal. Liquidmetal is a family of metal alloys that combines a variety of metallic elements. It's a technique that rapidly cools the mixture into a "metallic glass" with a distinctly different molecular structure than conventional metals. It becomes amorphous, as opposed to crystalline. That amorphous structure is the secret behind Liquidmetal's many remarkable properties. Continue reading this article

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