Bu Hengtong, Luan Hengwei, Kang Jingyi, Jia Jili, Guo Wenhui, Su Yunshuai, Ding Huaping, Chang Hsiang-Shun, Wang Ranbin, Wu You, Shi Lingxiang, Gong Pan, Zeng Qiaoshi, Shao Yang, Yao Kefu
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, China.
Nat Commun. 2025 Jan 10;16(1):562. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-55367-8.
As a medium to understand the nature of glass transition, ultrastable glasses have garnered increasing attention for their significance in fundamental science and technological applications. Most studies have produced ultrastable glasses through a surface-controlled process using physical vapor deposition. Here, we demonstrate an approach to accessing ultrastable glasses via the glass-to-glass transition, a bulk transformation that is inherently free from size constraints and anisotropy. The resulting ultrastable glass exhibits a significantly enhanced density (improved by 2.3%), along with high thermodynamic, kinetic, and mechanical stability. Furthermore, we propose that this method of accessing ultrastable glasses is general for metallic glasses, based on the examination of the competitive relationship between the glass-to-glass transition and crystallization. This strategy is expected to facilitate the proliferation of the ultrastable glass family, helping to resolve the instability issues of glass materials and devices and deepen our understanding of glasses and the glass transition.
作为一种理解玻璃转变本质的媒介，超稳定玻璃因其在基础科学和技术应用中的重要性而受到越来越多的关注。大多数研究通过使用物理气相沉积的表面控制过程来制备超稳定玻璃。在此，我们展示了一种通过玻璃到玻璃的转变来获得超稳定玻璃的方法，这是一种本质上不受尺寸限制和各向异性影响的体相转变。所得的超稳定玻璃表现出显著提高的密度（提高了2.3%），以及高的热力学、动力学和机械稳定性。此外，基于对玻璃到玻璃转变与结晶之间竞争关系的研究，我们提出这种获得超稳定玻璃的方法对于金属玻璃是通用的。预计这一策略将促进超稳定玻璃家族的扩展，有助于解决玻璃材料和器件的不稳定性问题，并加深我们对玻璃及玻璃转变的理解。
