Steel

Steel is an alloy of iron with typically a few percent of carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to iron. Many other additional elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion and oxidation resistant need typically an additional 11% chromium. Because of its high tensile strength and low cost, steel is used in buildings, infrastructure, tools, ships, trains, cars, machines, electrical appliances, and weapons. Iron is the base metal of steel and it can take on two crystalline forms (allotropic forms): body centred cubic and face-centred cubic. These forms depend on temperature. In the body-centred cubic arrangement, there is an iron atom in the centre and eight atoms at the vertices of each cubic unit cell; in the face-centred cubic, there is one atom at the centre of each of the six faces of the cubic unit cell and eight atoms at its vertices. It is the interaction of the allotropes of iron with the alloying elements, primarily carbon, that gives steel and cast iron their range of unique properties.