Kinetically Controlled Synthesis of Metallic Glass Nanoparticles with Expanded Composition Space

Abstract

Nanoscale metallic glasses offer opportunities for investigating fundamental properties of amorphous solids and technological applications in biomedicine, microengineering, and catalysis. However, their top-down fabrication is limited by bulk counterpart availability, and bottom-up synthesis remains underexplored due to strict formation conditions. Here, a kinetically controlled flash carbothermic reaction is developed, featuring ultrafast heating (>10⁵ K s⁻¹) and cooling rates (>10⁴ K s⁻¹), for synthesizing metallic glass nanoparticles within milliseconds. Nine compositional permutations of noble metals, base metals, and metalloid (M₁─M₂─P, M₁ = Pt/Pd, M₂ = Cu/Ni/Fe/Co/Sn) are synthesized with widely tunable particle sizes and substrates. Through combinatorial development, a substantially expanded composition space for nanoscale metallic glass is discovered compared to bulk counterpart, revealing that the nanosize effect enhances glass forming ability. Leveraging this, several nanoscale metallic glasses are synthesized with composition that have never, to the knowledge, been synthesized in bulk. The metallic glass nanoparticles exhibit high activity in heterogeneous catalysis, outperforming crystalline metal alloy nanoparticles.