Foil (metal)
A foil is a very thin sheet of metal, usually made by hammering or rolling. Foils are most easily made with malleable metals, such as aluminium, copper, tin, and gold. Foils usually bend under their own weight and can be torn easily. The more malleable a metal, the thinner foil can be made with it. For example, aluminium foil is usually about 1/1000 inch (0.03 mm), whereas gold (more malleable than aluminium) can be made into foil only a few atoms thick, called gold leaf. Extremely thin foil is called metal leaf. Leaf tears very easily and must be picked up with special brushes.
Mu-metal
Mu-metal typically has relative permeability values of 80,000–100,000 compared to several thousand for ordinary steel. It is a "soft" ferromagnetic material; it has low magnetic anisotropy and magnetostriction, giving it a low coercivity so that it saturates at low magnetic fields. This gives it low hysteresis losses when used in AC magnetic circuits. Other high-permeability nickel–iron alloys such as permalloy have similar magnetic properties; mu-metal's advantage is that it is more ductile, malleable and workable, allowing it to be easily formed into the thin sheets needed for magnetic shields.