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Breaking the vitrification limitation of monatomic metals.

Xing TongYue-E ZhangBao-Shuang ShangHua-Ping ZhangZezhou LiYao ZhangGang WangYan-Hui LiuYong ZhaoBo ZhangHai-Bo KeJihan ZhouHai-Yang BaiWei-Hua Wang
Published in: Nature materials (2024)
The question of whether all materials can solidify into the glassy form proposed by Turnbull half a century ago remains unsolved. Some of the simplest systems of monatomic metals have not been vitrified, especially the close-packed face-centred cubic metals. Here we report the vitrification of gold, which is notoriously difficult to be vitrified, and several similar close-packed face-centred cubic and hexagonal metals using a method of picosecond pulsed laser ablation in a liquid medium. The vitrification occurs through the rapid cooling during laser ablation and the inhibition of nucleation by the liquid medium. Using this method, a large number of atomic configurations, including glassy configurations, can be generated simultaneously, from which a stable glass state can be sampled. Simulations demonstrate that the favourable stability of monatomic metals stems from the strong topological frustration of icosahedra-like clusters. Our work breaks the limitation of the glass-forming ability of matter, indicating that vitrification is an intrinsic property of matter and providing a strategy for the preparation and design of metallic glasses from an atomic configuration perspective.
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