Abstract
Ubiquitous oxygen drives degradation, spoilage, and side reactions, making oxygen scavenging essential for materials preservation and reaction stabilization. However, conventional oxygen scavengers exhibit limited oxygen removal rates and capacities far below their theoretical maximums, wasting resources while lagging behind industry needs. Here, we report Fe-based metallic glasses as efficient oxygen scavengers, achieving oxygen removal rates 1–4 orders of magnitude higher than conventional systems. In FeSiB metallic glass, Fe oxidation synergistically activates Si, delivering a 24-hour oxygen removal capacity of 1.439 L g-1—reaching the Fe-based theoretical limit—and a 48-hour capacity of 1.596 L g-1, surpassing it. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the amorphous structure significantly lowers the oxygen adsorption energy barrier and facilitates O–O bond cleavage. Moreover, the generated self-reinforcing microdomains mediate O2/H2O transport via robust autocatalytic cycling. These results highlight a promising strategy for oxygen potential control and suggest a possible paradigm for catalytic applications.
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Source data are provided with this paper (ref. 59). All the raw data relevant to the study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52271148), National Natural Science Foundation of China/Hong Kong Research Grants Council Joint Research Scheme (Project No. N_CityU151/23), Hong Kong JLFS-RGC-Joint Laboratory Funding Scheme (No. JLFS/E-102/24), Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) (No. ITS/059/23MS), Guangdong Province Science and Technology Plan Project (No. 2023B1212120008). We thank Dr. Yang Chen from Peking University for his suggestion on simulation method, and thank Shiyanjia Lab (www.shiyanjia.com) for the DFT calculation service. J. Lu thanks the IMR-CityU Joint Laboratory of Nanomaterials & Nanomechanics and Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory of Modern Surface Engineering Technology.
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J.S. conceived the idea. J.S., G.X., J. Lu, and K.Y. supervised the research and established the research route. J.S. and H. Liu. carried out the main the experiments. H. Luan designed the DFT calculations. Y.L. optimized the calculations. J.S., H. Luan, Y.S., G.X., and J. Lv analyzed the data. J.S., H. Luan, and Y.S. prepared the paper. All authors discussed the results. J.S. and H. Luan contributed equally to this work.
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Si, J., Luan, H., Liu, H. et al. Fe-based metallic glasses as efficient oxygen scavengers. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71713-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71713-4
