What Is Malleability in Metal?

Malleability refers to a material’s capacity to be shaped or formed without fracturing. In other words, when something is malleable, you can reshape it without it falling apart. This property is also commonly referred to as plasticity.

A familiar illustration of malleability is clay—or even Play-Doh. These materials can be molded into countless forms without crumbling, which is why they’re perfect for sculpting or creative play.

In contrast, something like a cinder block is the opposite; it’s rigid and cannot be reshaped without breaking. Another everyday example is wet cement, which is highly malleable and can be poured or shaped as needed. Once it dries, however, it loses that quality and becomes fixed and unyielding.

So, whenever you’re working with materials and wondering if they can take on a new shape, you’re really asking about their malleability.

What Is Malleability?

Malleability is a key physical property that many metals share, describing how easily they can be hammered, pressed, or rolled into thin sheets without cracking or breaking. If you’ve ever watched someone shape metal or even just seen gold leaf, you’ve seen malleability in action—it’s what lets metals change form when compressed, rather than shattering.

We usually measure a metal’s malleability by the amount of compressive force it can handle before it finally gives way. The reason some metals are more malleable than others mostly comes down to differences in their crystal structures.

Metals with high malleability can be turned into extremely thin sheets—gold leaf is probably the classic example that comes to mind. Interestingly, a metal that’s highly malleable isn’t always equally ductile (meaning it won’t necessarily stretch into wires as easily). Lead is a good illustration: it’s very malleable, but not very ductile.

Most of the time, when people talk about malleability, they’re referring to metals in groups 1 through 12 of the periodic table. This property isn’t just interesting in theory—it’s vital for industries like appliance and car manufacturing. Thanks to malleability, we’re able to form metals into the flat and curved shapes needed for everything from refrigerators and microwaves to car panels and stove tops.

Introduction Of Malleability

Malleability basically refers to how well a material can be hammered or rolled into thin sheets without cracking. You won’t find this property in non-metals; it’s mostly something we see with metals.

Think about metals like gold, iron, aluminum, copper, silver, and lead—they’re all quite malleable. If you hit them with a hammer, they’ll bend and shape themselves rather than shatter into pieces, which is what happens with non-malleable metals.

It’s worth pointing out that being malleable doesn’t always mean a metal is ductile, and vice versa. For example, gold is both ductile (you can stretch it into a wire) and malleable (you can hammer it thin), but lead, while malleable, doesn’t have the same ductility.

How much pressure a metal can handle before it breaks—its compressive strength—gives us a way to measure this property. The differences in malleability among metals actually come down to the way their atoms are arranged in crystal structures.

Something interesting happens at the grain boundaries—the spots where those crystals meet. These boundaries are usually weaker spots, so metals with a lot of grain boundaries can end up being harder, but if there are too few, the metal becomes more brittle and less malleable.

And if you heat a metal up, it usually becomes even easier to shape, because the crystal grains shift around more easily at higher temperatures.

Gold and silver are famously malleable. You can hammer hot iron into a sheet pretty easily, too. Again, you won’t see this in non-metals—they’re just not built for it. Non-malleable metals, on the other hand, will snap or crumble if you try to hammer them. Most malleable metals can be twisted or bent into all sorts of shapes without breaking.

One last interesting tidbit: zinc is only malleable within a certain temperature range—specifically, between 100 and 200°C. Outside of that window, it’s much more brittle and will break instead of bend.

Malleable Metals

When we talk about malleable metals, we’re really diving into what happens at the atomic level when these materials are under pressure. Basically, when you push or compress a malleable metal, its atoms don’t just shatter or crack apart.

Instead, they roll over each other and shift into new spots, but they still keep their metallic bonds intact. That’s what lets these metals bend and change shape without breaking. Once enough pressure is applied, those atoms settle into their new positions for good.

Examples of malleable metals are:

• Gold
• Silver
• Iron
• Aluminum
• Copper
• Tin
• Indium
• Lithium

You’ve probably seen products made from these metals that show off this property, like gold leaf, lithium foil, or little pellets of indium.

How does Malleability Work?

It all comes down to how their atoms are arranged. Metals that have what’s called a “close-packed” crystal structure like hexagonal close-packed (hcp) or face-centered cubic (fcc) tend to be much more malleable than those with more open structures, such as body-centered cubic (bcc).

For instance, gold, silver, and magnesium (which all have those tightly-packed atomic layers) are noticeably easier to shape compared to metals like vanadium or chromium.

If you picture the atoms in these close-packed structures, they’re stacked up like sheets of paper, which lets them slip over each other pretty easily when you apply force. On the flip side, body-centered structures are more like corrugated cardboard they don’t give as easily.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the actual structure of a metal isn’t set in stone. Factors like temperature, impurities, or even how the metal was processed can change how the atoms are arranged. That means how malleable a metal or an alloy is can vary quite a bit, depending on its specific conditions.

Are Any Nonmetals Malleable?

Generally speaking, the elements that are nonmetals are not malleable. However, there are a few exceptions. Certain allotropes are malleable. An example is the plastic allotrope of sulfur.

While nonmetallic elements are not malleable, some nonmetallic polymers are malleable. For example, some plastics display malleability.

Difference Between Malleable and Ductile

Malleability and ductility are often mentioned together when discussing metals, but they’re not quite the same thing. Malleability is what lets a metal get squished or hammered into new shapes—think of gold being turned into thin, shiny sheets. Ductility, meanwhile, is all about how far you can stretch a metal without it snapping, like when copper gets pulled into long wires.

Copper is a great example because it does both jobs well. It’s easy to draw into wires (thanks to its ductility) and just as simple to flatten out into sheets (that’s malleability at work).

That said, not every metal shares these traits to the same degree, and having one property doesn’t always mean having the other. Lead and tin, for instance, behave as expected—they’re pretty easy to shape or stretch when cold—but if you heat them up close to their melting points, they suddenly turn brittle and start to break apart.

On the flip side, most metals actually become softer and more workable as you add heat. That’s because heat changes the way the metal’s crystal structure behaves, loosening things up and making it easier to bend or shape.

Malleability and Hardness

Some metals are naturally tough and resist being shaped—antimony and bismuth are good examples. Their atomic arrangement isn’t as orderly, so the atoms don’t slip past each other easily when pressure is applied.

You can picture this as having more boundaries between different regions of the metal’s structure, which makes it more likely for cracks to form and spread. The takeaway: more grain boundaries generally mean a metal will be harder, more brittle, and less malleable.

Effect of Temperature on Malleability

For most metals, raising the temperature is a quick way to boost malleability. When heated, the number of grain boundaries drops, and metals become easier to shape.

Zinc, for example, is quite brittle at room temperature. But if you heat it up past 300°F (about 150°C), you’ll find it suddenly turns malleable enough to roll into thin sheets.

Effect of Alloying on Malleability

Mixing metals, a process called alloying, is another lever for controlling malleability. Sometimes the result is a metal that’s harder to work with. Brass, for example, doesn’t match the malleability of either copper or zinc, which are its main ingredients.

Similarly, alloys like 14-karat gold or sterling silver are less malleable than their pure forms—this extra hardness makes them more suitable for certain uses, but less easy to shape.

Measuring Malleability

If you’re wondering how scientists measure malleability, there are two main tests. One method is to see how much pressure a metal can take before it finally breaks under compression. Another way is to roll or hammer the metal and check how thin you can get it before it fractures. Both tests give a good sense of how easily a metal can be worked without falling apart.

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