Abstract
With increasingly stringent application environments, there is a growing demand for designing and fabricating of promising structural materials. Conventional metallurgical methods typically struggle to produce positive mixing enthalpy alloys with uniform microstructures and consistent properties due to mutual immiscibility and uncontrollable segregation during solidification. To this end, we employ a bottom-up approach to fabricate Cu-50 vol% Fe55Cr25Mo16B2C2 positive mixing enthalpy composites, utilizing ultrafast high-temperature sintering and instantaneous quenching. The method effectively prevents liquid segregation during the molten state and allows precise control over the size and distribution of the two phases. In addition, incorporated metallic glass particles as the hard phase additives, which can quickly form the localized multi-phase nanocrystals and establish a robust interlocking structure with pure copper during rapid sintering. Upon rapid quenching, the two phases solidify with a tight and conformal interface, while the elemental cross-diffusion and phase separation are mitigated. The mechanical tensile strength of the resulting composite is approximately 8 times greater than that of pure Cu. The wear resistance improves by 40-50 times, and the Vickers hardness increases by a factor of 10. The innovative sintering method provides a feasible pathway for developing and manufacturing of positive mixing enthalpy composite materials.
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Source data are provided with this paper. Additional experimental data that supports the findings of this study are available in the Supplementary Information and from the corresponding author upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 52272249 to C.W., 52201190 to Z. Wu, 22209165 to C.W. and 52222104 to S.L.). Z. Wu acknowledges the financial support from the Scientific Research Innovation Capability Support Project for Young Faculty (no. SRICSPYF-BS2025072), the Guangdong and Hong Kong Universities ‘1 + 1 + 1’ Joint Research Collaboration Scheme, and Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (no. 2024A1515010964). We sincerely thank Professor Laima Luo from Hefei University of Technology for her support with testing and thank Sheng Peng, Shangshu Wu and Xiao Dong from City University of Hong Kong (Dongguan) for their valuable assistance. We thank Shengquan Fu at the Instruments Center for Physical Science, University of Science and Technology of China, for assistance with the OXFORD Femto-Tools Nano Indenter (installed on CIQTEK Co., Ltd., FESEM5000X) measurements and characterizations. We also thank Dr. Jie Tian from the Material Test and Analysis Lab, Engineering and Materials Science Experiment Center at the University of Science and Technology of China, and Jianliu Huang from Carl Zeiss China for their valuable discussions and technical support with the Zeiss G500 SEM. The TEM work was partially carried out using Scientific Compass (www.shiyanjia.com).
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C.W., Z.W., and S.S. conceived and designed the UHSQ experiments. S.S. conducted the UHSQ sintering experiments, metallographic analysis, mechanical property testing, TEM imaging, and SEM imaging with EDS mapping. S.S. also prepared the samples, performed XRD measurements, and carried out XRD characterization. C.W., S.L., Z.W., X.L., and S.S. wrote and revised the manuscript. All authors contributed to the discussion of results and provided comments on the manuscript.
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Shen, S., Wu, Z., Liu, X. et al. Breaking immiscibility barriers: ultrafast sintering of interlocked Cu-Fe-based composites. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68107-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68107-3
