Diverse glasses revealed from Chang'E-5 lunar regolith.

Lunar glasses with different origins act as snapshots of their formation processes, providing a rich archive of the Moon's formation and evolution. Here, we reveal diverse glasses from Chang'E-5 (CE-5) lunar regolith, and clarify their physical origins of liquid quenching, vapor deposition and irradiation damage respectively. The series of quenched glasses, including rotation-featured particles, vesicular agglutinates and adhered melts, record multiple-scale impact events.

Exceptionally High Saturation Magnetic Flux Density and Ultralow Coercivity via an Amorphous-Nanocrystalline Transitional Microstructure in an FeCo-Based Alloy.

High saturation magnetic flux density (B ) of soft magnetic materials is essential for increasing the power density of modern magnetic devices and motor machines. Yet, increasing B is always at the expense of high coercivity (H ), presenting a general trade-off in the soft magnetic material family. Here, superior comprehensive soft magnetic properties, i.

Microscopic Structural Evolution during Ultrastable Metallic Glass Formation.

By decreasing the rate of physical vapor deposition, ZrCuAl metallic glasses with improved stability and mechanical performances can be formed, while the microscopic structural mechanisms remain unclear. Here, with scanning transmission electron microscopy and high-energy synchrotron X-ray diffraction, we found that the metallic glass deposited at a higher rate exhibits a heterogeneous structure with compositional fluctuations at a distance of a few nanometers, which gradually disappear on decreasing the deposition rate; eventually, a homogeneous structure is developed approaching ultrastability. This microscopic structural evolution suggests the existence of the following two dynamical processes during ultrastable metallic glass formation: a faster diffusion process driven by the kinetic energy of the depositing atoms, which results in nanoscale compositional fluctuations, and a slower collective relaxation process that eliminates the compositional and structural heterogeneity, equilibrates the deposited atoms, and strengthens the local atomic connectivity.

Direct observation of atomic-level fractal structure in a metallic glass membrane.

Determination and conceptualization of atomic structures of metallic glasses or amorphous alloys remain a grand challenge. Structural models proposed for bulk metallic glasses are still controversial owing to experimental difficulties in directly imaging the atom positions in three-dimensional structures. With the advanced atomic-resolution imaging, here we directly observed the atomic arrangements in atomically thin metallic glassy membranes obtained by vapor deposition.

Observation of cavitation governing fracture in glasses.

Crack propagation is the major vehicle for material failure, but the mechanisms by which cracks propagate remain longstanding riddles, especially for glassy materials with a long-range disordered atomic structure. Recently, cavitation was proposed as an underlying mechanism governing the fracture of glasses, but experimental determination of the cavitation behavior of fracture is still lacking. Here, we present unambiguous experimental evidence to firmly establish the cavitation mechanism in the fracture of glasses.