Metamaterials made from Ni-based amorphous alloy micro-nanolattices with high mechanical and electrochemical performance

Abstract

Amorphous alloys, i.e., metallic glasses, combine high strength, hardness, excellent wear and corrosion resistance, and unique thermoplasticity due to their short-range ordered but long-range disordered glassy structures. However, critical size constraints limit their applications in advanced fields such as electrocatalysis, sensing, and complex devices. Here we report a novel lattice metamaterial fabricated by conformally depositing NiNbSn amorphous alloy coatings onto three-dimensional (3D)-printed polymer scaffolds with a cubic micro-nano lattice template. The cubic lattice design enables efficient stress transfer and uniform strain energy distribution, minimizing stress concentration. Meanwhile, the NiNbSn coating, featuring amorphous and nanocrystalline components, further enhances the structure through size hardening. The resulting hybrid polymer/alloy lattice shows excellent mechanical properties and an exceptional energy absorption capacity. Furthermore, coating the hybrid lattice with a NiMoPB glassy film results in a 3D nano-micro electrode for glucose detection, achieving a sensitivity of 13 times higher than that of the cast-counterpart. Our strategy opens a new path to fabricating hybrid polymer/MGs micro-nano lattice structures with excellent mechanical and electrochemical performance, broadening the potential applications of metamaterials.