What makes Glass and some types of Plastic clear? Why couldn’t we make clear metal or other “clear” Materials?
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A substance’s properties like translucent or opaque are based on it’s molecular structure and elemental components. Some substances can be manipulated to change their properties either by changing their molecular structure or by changing their elemental components.
Carbon in the form of graphite is used for pencil lead. But, add pressure and heat and carbon becomes diamonds.
Iron and carbon are the base components of steel, but it can be made stronger, corrosion resistant, or have other qualities altered by adding, vanadium, zinc, molybdenum, chromium, or other elements.
In Star Trek IV, they needed transparent aluminum and supposedly gave someone a chemical formula for it. Today there is a clear polymer that has similar properties to aluminum, but not all, so it can be used as an alternate for aluminum in some applications.
The same properties that give transparent things their transparency conflict with the properties we tend to want from metals. So to make a clear metal means it would likely no longer be good if you need a metal in your application.
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