Turing Pattern Engineering Enables Kinetically Ultrastable yet Ductile Metallic Glasses

TL;DR

This paper introduces a pattern engineering approach in metallic glasses that achieves ultrastability and ductility simultaneously by controlling oxygen clustering, enabling enhanced thermal stability without sacrificing plasticity.

Contribution

The study demonstrates that pattern engineering can decouple kinetic stability from thermodynamic stability in metallic glasses, a novel strategy for designing durable and ductile amorphous materials.

Findings

Achieved approximately 200 K increase in glass transition onset temperature.

Demonstrated retention of ductility and fracture toughness in ultrastable glasses.

Revealed oxygen clustering as a key factor in kinetic stabilization.

Abstract

Enhancing the kinetic stability of glasses often necessitates deepening thermodynamic stability, which typically compromises ductility due to increased structural rigidity. Decoupling these properties remains a critical challenge for functional applications. Here, we demonstrate that pattern engineering in metallic glasses (MGs) enables unprecedented kinetic ultrastability while retaining thermodynamic metastability and intrinsic plasticity. Through atomistic simulations guided by machine-learning interatomic potentials and replica-exchange molecular dynamics, we reveal that clustering oxygen contents, driven by reaction-diffusion-coupled pattern dynamics, act as localized pinning sites. These motifs drastically slow structural relaxation, yielding kinetic stability comparable to crystal-like ultrastable glasses while retaining an energetic as-cast state. Remarkably, the thermodynamically metastable state preserves heterogeneous atomic mobility, allowing strain delocalization under mechanical stress. By tailoring oxygen modulation via geometric patterning, we achieve an approximately 200 K increase in the onset temperature of the glass transition (Tonset) while maintaining fracture toughness akin to conventional MGs. This work establishes a paradigm of kinetic stabilization without thermodynamic compromise, offering a roadmap to additively manufacture bulk amorphous materials with combined hyperstability and plasticity.