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Despite being researched for nearly five decades, chemical application of metallic glass is scarcely explored. Here we show electrochemical nonenzymatic glucose-sensing ability of nickel–niobium (Ni60Nb40) amorphous alloys in alkaline medium. Three different Ni60Nb40 systems with the same elemental composition, but varying microstructures are created following different synthetic routes and tested for their glucose-sensing performance. Among melt-spun ribbon, nanoglass, and amorphous–crystalline nanocomposite materials, nanoglass showed the best performance in terms of high anodic current density, sensitivity (20 mA cm–2 mM–1), limit of detection (100 nM glucose), stability, reproducibility (above 5000 cycles), and sensing accuracy among nonenzymatic glucose sensors involving amorphous alloys. When annealed under vacuum, only the heat-treated nanoglass retained a similar electrochemical-sensing property, while the other materials failed to yield desired results. In nanoglass, a network of glassy interfaces, compared to melt-spun ribbon, is plausibly responsible for the enhanced sensitivity.

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Nanoglasses represent a novel structural modification of amorphous materials, exhibiting properties and structural details that are markedly different from those observed in metallic glasses prepared by rapid quenching. In this review, the synthesis method and the techniques used for charactering the structure of nanoglasses are described together with our current understanding of their salient microstructural features. It is believed that the structure of nanoglasses consists of two distinct amorphous regions give rise to mechanical, thermal, and magnetic properties that are significantly different from those observed in rapidly quenched (RQ) metallic glasses. Nanoglasses, therefore, constitute a distinct new class of amorphous materials and thus opening up new opportunities for their potential use in a number of structural and functional applications.

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Nanocrystalline materials reveal excellent mechanical properties but the mechanism by which they deform is still debated. X-ray line broadening indicates the presence of large heterogeneous strains even when the average grain size is smaller than 10 nm. Although the primary sources of heterogeneous strains are dislocations, their direct observation in nanocrystalline materials is challenging. In order to identify the source of heterogeneous strains in nanocrystalline materials, we prepared Pd-10 pct Au specimens by inert gas condensation and applied high-pressure torsion (HPT) up to c @ 21. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and molecular dynamic (MD) simulations are used to investigate the dislocation structure in the grain interiors and in the grain boundary (GB) regions in the as-prepared and HPT-deformed specimens. Our results show that most of the GBs contain lattice dislocations with high densities. The average dislocation densities determined by HRTEM and MD simulation are in good correlation with the values provided by X-ray line profile analysis. Strain distribution determined by MD simulation is shown to follow the Krivoglaz-Wilkens strain function of dislocations. Experiments, MD simulations, and theoretical analysis all prove that the sources of strain broadening in X-ray diffraction of nanocrystalline materials are lattice dislocations in the GB region. The results are discussed in terms of misfit dislocations emanating in the GB regions reducing elastic strain compatibility. The results provide fundamental new insight for understanding the role of GBs in plastic deformation in both nanograin and coarse grain materials of any grain size.

Electro-optic (EO) modulators rely on interaction of optical and electrical signals with second-order nonlinear media. For the optical signal, this interaction can be strongly enhanced by using dielectric slot-waveguide structures that exploit a field discontinuity at the interface between a high-index waveguide core and the low-index EO cladding. In contrast to this, the electrical signal is usually applied through conductive regions in the direct vicinity of the optical waveguide. To avoid excessive optical loss, the conductivity of these regions is maintained at a moderate level, thus leading to inherent RC-limitations of the modulation bandwidth. In this paper, we show that these limitations can be overcome by extending the slot-waveguide concept to the modulating radio-frequency (RF) signal. Our device combines an RF slotline that relies on BaTiO3 as a high-k dielectric material with a conventional silicon photonic slot waveguide and a highly efficient organic EO cladding material. In a proof-of-concept experiment, we demonstrate a 1 mm-long Mach-Zehnder modulator that offers a 3 dB-bandwidth of 76 GHz and a 6 dB-bandwidth of 110 GHz along with a small π-voltage of 1.3 V (UπL = 1.3 V mm). To the best of our knowledge, this represents the largest EO bandwidth so far achieved with a silicon photonic modulator based on dielectric waveguides. We further demonstrate the viability of the device in a data transmission experiment using four-state pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) at line rates up to 200 Gbit/s. Our first-generation devices leave vast room for further improvement and may open an attractive route towards highly efficient silicon photonic modulators that combine sub-1 mm device lengths with sub-1 V drive voltages and modulation bandwidths of more than 100 GHz.