Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) have successfully been used to replicate molds that are structured at the nano- and even atomic scale through thermoplastic forming (TPF), an ability that was speculated to be rooted in the glass’ featureless atomic structure. These previous demonstrations of atomically precise imprinting, however, were performed under conditions where mold atomic feature dimensions coincided with the unit cell size of constituents in the BMG. In order to evaluate if accurate atomic-scale replication is possible in general, i.e., independent of the accidental presence of favorable constituent size/feature size relationships, we have used Pt57.5Cu14.7Ni5.3P22.5 to replicate three different crystalline facets of LaAlO3 single crystals, each exposing distinct atomic step heights. We find that in all cases, the terraced surface termination can be copied with remarkable fidelity, corroborating that BMGs when thermoplastic formed are capable of adapting to any externally imposed confinement with sub-angstrom precision without being limited by factors related to the specifics of their internal structure. This unprecedented capability of quasi-limitless replication fidelity reveals that the deformation mechanism in the supercooled liquid state of BMGs is essentially homogeneous and suggests TPF of BMGs to be a versatile toolbox for atomic and precision nanoscale imprinting.

中文翻译：

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没有固有长度尺度的原子印记

块状金属玻璃 (BMG) 已成功用于通过热塑性成型 (TPF) 复制纳米级甚至原子级结构的模具，据推测，这种能力源于玻璃的无特征原子结构。然而，这些先前的原子精确压印演示是在模具原子特征尺寸与 BMG 中成分的晶胞尺寸一致的条件下进行的。为了评估准确的原子级复制是否可能在一般情况下是可能的，即独立于有利的成分尺寸/特征尺寸关系的偶然存在，我们使用 Pt57.5Cu14.7Ni5.3P22.5 复制了三个不同的晶体面LaAlO3 单晶，每一个都暴露出不同的原子台阶高度。我们发现，在所有情况下，梯形表面终端可以以非凡的保真度复制，证实了热塑性塑料成型时的 BMG 能够以亚埃精度适应任何外部施加的限制，而不受与其内部结构细节相关的因素的限制。这种前所未有的准无限复制保真能力表明，BMGs 在过冷液态下的变形机制基本上是均匀的，并表明 BMGs 的 TPF 是原子和精密纳米压印的多功能工具箱。