That question brought us to Zhigang “Zak” Fang, a soft-spoken and remarkably humble professor at the University of Utah whose groundbreaking research may finally remove the barriers that have held titanium back for more than 70 years.
A Scientist Shaped by a Time Without Science
Fang grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution, a period in which universities were effectively shut down and access to higher education was extremely limited.
“As young people at that time, if we had a chance to go to college, we grabbed it,” he recalls. “It didn’t matter what it was.”
He was assigned to study metallurgy at what was then called the University of Iron and Steel Technology in Beijing. “I did not choose this,” he says. “But I guess I had some natural inclination to do technology.”
Like many Chinese students of his generation, Dr. Fang hoped to pursue advanced study abroad. He came to the United States in 1987 and completed his graduate studies in Alabama. After earning his PhD, he spent nearly eleven years in industry — first in Arkansas, then in Houston — specializing in tungsten carbide for oil and gas drilling.
“You think about it,” he says. “You have to drill a hole 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 feet deep to get to the gas and oil. So the material for that drill bit is extremely important.”
Those years under intense industrial demands shaped how he understood metals under stress; a perspective that would later influence his approach to titanium.
In 2002, a faculty position opened at the University of Utah. Dr. Fang accepted, moved to Salt Lake City, and eventually shifted his research toward a metal he now studies more deeply than most metallurgists: titanium.
Why Titanium Is Extraordinary and Infuriating
Titanium occupies unusual territory in the periodic table of modern life. Lightweight yet strong, resistant to corrosion, and gentle to the human body, it appears everywhere from knee replacements to jet engines.
But titanium also hides a stubborn secret: it loves oxygen a little too much.
“Titanium is very abundant in the earth,” Fang explains. “But it has a very strong affinity for oxygen. In minerals, it comes as titanium dioxide, and breaking that bond takes a lot more energy than breaking iron oxide.”
This leads to two major problems:
1. Extracting titanium metal is extremely difficult.
The conventional method called the Kroll process converts titanium oxide into titanium chloride using chlorine gas, then reduces it with magnesium at high temperatures. The steps require large furnaces, corrosive chemicals, and energy-heavy distillation. This process dates back to the 1940s but remains the global standard.
2. Even after becoming “metal,” titanium still dissolves oxygen.
This is the part most people never hear about.
Read the full online article By Golda Hukic-Markosian, Ph.D. in the magazine Faces of Utah (edition 3).
Buy the print copy here.
