Nitinol Sheet and Plate

Nitinol Sheet Description

Nitinol is a shape-memory alloy with amazing properties.

You can take a straight piece of nitinol sheet, bend it into looping coil in your hand and roll it across the table. Then when you pick it up and toss it into a bowl of hot water, it will immediately spring right back out to its original straight shape with stunning speed and force.

Nitinol was first discovered in 1959 at the Naval Ordinance Laboratory where engineers were challenged with developing a nose cone for the first submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missile. Among other metals that were being analyzed, it was noticed that cold bars of nickel-titanium alloy made a dull lead-like thud when they were dropped on the ground, but warm bars "rang like a bell". This hinted at something happening microscopically within the alloy in a unique way and lead to the discovery of its amazing pseudo-elasticity.

This gave it wide prospects of utility well beyond the nosecones of nuclear missiles, though its namesake harkens from that origin.

Nitinol is exceedingly difficult to make, due to the exceptionally tight compositional control required, and the tremendous reactivity of titanium. Every atom of titanium that combines with oxygen or carbon is an atom that is robbed from the NiTi lattice, thus shifting the composition and making the transformation temperature that much lower. There are two primary melting methods used today:

Vacuum Arc Remelting (VAR)

This is done by striking an electrical arc between the raw material and a water-cooled copper strike plate. Melting is done in a high vacuum, and the mold itself is water-cooled copper.

Vacuum Induction Melting (VIM)

This is done by using alternating magnetic fields to heat the raw materials in a crucible (generally carbon). This is also done in a high vacuum.

The shape memory and superelasticity properties are the most unique properties of nitinol sheet and plate. The shape memory property allows the material to "remember" its original shape and retain it when heated above its transformation-temperature. It happens due to the different crystal structures of nickel and titanium. This pseudo-elastic metal also shows incredible elasticity which is approximately 10 to 30 times more than that of any ordinary metal.

Nitinol sheet (or plate) is a unique form of shape memory alloys because its shape allows for additional design opportunities. Unlike wire and tube, sheet is a two-dimensional structure, which overcomes a set of design obstacles. A flat nitnol sheet enables designers to perform operations that cannot be done on the wire or tube, like stamping, punching, and deep drawing. It also offers design flexibility not available with other forms — designing products flat and then forming it to make devices.

Our nitinol sheet and plate can be produced with very tight thickness tolerances and uniform thickness control across the surface. This high process capability benefits downstream process optimization and automation — consistent starting thickness, controlled post-processing will yield predictable final dimensions.

SSC offers nitinol sheet and plate with different Af points, allowing for a customization of alloy compositions, heat treatment conditions, surface finishes, loading plateaus, and tensile strengths.

Nitinol sheet and plate is ideal for laser cutting, electrical discharge machining (EDM), and photo etching, enabling the creation of detailed, small scaled structures.

Applications and Related Industries for Nitinol Sheet and Plate

● Laser cutting

● Photochemical etching

● Stamping

● EDM machining

● Efficient processing

● Surface finishing

● Medical

● Biomaterials

● Research & Laboratory

Chemical Identifiers

Nitinol Properties (Theoretical)