Pressure-Tailored Energy State and Medium-Range-Order Structure in Fe-Ni-P Nanostructured Metallic Glass for...

Metallic glass has emerged as a promising electro-catalytic material due to its metastable energy states and abundant undercoordinated sites. However, the limited capability to precisely manipulate its energy states and insufficient understanding of the energy-structure-property relationships hinder practical applications. Here, an innovative Laser-IGC (laser ablation with inert gas condensation) synthesis strategy is developed by combining pressure-controlled consolidation (1-5 GPa) to fabricate Fe-Ni-P nanostructured metallic glass with tunable atomic structure and energy states. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and surface wettability analyses reveal a consistent increase in energy state as consolidation pressure decreases. Pair distribution function (PDF) characterization discloses that pressure reduction induces atomic rearrangement at the medium-range order (MRO) scale (3-5 Å), leading to optimized connectivity and packing density in the glassy matrix. The Fe-Ni-P nanostructured metallic glass consolidated at 1 GPa achieves outstanding glucose sensing performance with a high sensitivity of 1214.82 µA cm^-2 mm^-1 and ultra-stability of 89% signal retention after 30-day storage. This work preliminarily establishes a correlation between energy states and electro-catalytic properties, while providing a novel pressure-engineering pathway for designing high-performance metallic glass catalysts.