Exploration of New Amorphous Materials via Atomic Manufacturing

TONG Xing; YAN Yuqiang; KE Haibo; WANG Weihua

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-6457.2025.12.001

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Journal of Netshape Forming Engineering ›› 2025, Vol. 17 ›› Issue (12) : 1-14. DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-6457.2025.12.001

Advanced Forming Engineering of High-Entropy and Amorphous Alloys

Exploration of New Amorphous Materials via Atomic Manufacturing

TONG Xing¹, YAN Yuqiang¹, KE Haibo^1,*, WANG Weihua^1,2,*

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Abstract

Amorphous materials play a significant role in development of human civilization and science. Among them, amorphous alloys, as a novel class of amorphous materials, exhibit superior properties such as high strength and high hardness due to their atomic structure characterized by long-range disorder and short-range order, offering broad application prospects across various fields. However, conventional top-down rapid quenching techniques are constrained by their reliance on extremely high cooling rates, high compositional sensitivity, and poor structural uniformity. In recent years, the bottom-up concept of atomic manufacturing has provided a new pathway for the preparation of amorphous alloys. With atoms or atomic clusters as the fundamental building blocks, atomic manufacturing enables the construction of bulk materials through controllable generation, deposition, and assembly, thereby bypassing the limitations of melt-quenching routes and overcoming bottlenecks in traditional processing. The representative advances of atomic manufacturing in the field of amorphous materials are summarized, including the preparation of ultrastable glasses, vitrification of monatomic metal, structural and property diversification, and the precise assembly of high-entropy disordered alloys. Nevertheless, there exist some challenges, such as the controlled generation of cluster sources, unclear interfacial bonding mechanisms, and the lack of cross-scale property mapping. Atomic manufacturing is expected to drive the exploration of novel amorphous materials, deepen the understanding of glass formation mechanisms and structural fundamentals, and promote the broad application of amorphous alloys in high-performance structural components, functional devices, and energy conversion systems.

Key words

atomic manufacturing / amorphous materials / atomic clusters / multi-scale assembly / material properties controlling

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TONG Xing, YAN Yuqiang, KE Haibo, WANG Weihua. Exploration of New Amorphous Materials via Atomic Manufacturing[J]. Journal of Netshape Forming Engineering. 2025, 17(12): 1-14 https://doi.org/10.3969/j.issn.1674-6457.2025.12.001

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Funding

The National Natural Science Foundation of China (52471180); Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2024A1515140156, 2019B030302010); Guangdong Provincial Quantum Science Strategic Initiative (GDZX2301001); Guangdong Province Talent Project (2024TQ08C641); SLAB Young Scientists Program