Plasticity Enhancement in Metallic Glasses via Aging-assisted Ultrasonic Vibrations

The aging of glassy materials is an inevitable process leading to progressive property degradation. In metallic glasses (MGs), aging-induced property degradation poses a persistent challenge to their applications. Over the years, rejuvenating or even reversing the aged glasses remains a critical elusive goal. Here we report that ultrasonic vibration (UV) treatment can reverse aging in a Zr-based MG within 0.5 seconds, achieving plasticity up to 14.5% that is 1.5 times that of the as-cast MG. This intriguing plasticity enhancement results from a UV-induced higher-energy state, as evidenced by structural enthalpy recovery, boson peak restoration, and a more disordered structure revealed by the pair distribution functions. This higher-energy state can be properly explained through the framework of “anti-free volume defects” with a high atomic packing density. Furthermore, we propose a novel “aging-assisted UV loading” method: pre-aging stabilizes the MG, enabling subsequent UV to amplify plasticity. This strategy achieves exceptional plasticity improvement, demonstrating that controlled aging can paradoxically enhance material properties.