It is known that the room-temperature plastic deformation of bulk metallic glasses is compromised by strain softening and shear localization, resulting in near-zero tensile ductility. The incorporation of metallic glasses into engineering materials, therefore, is often accompanied by complete brittleness or an apparent loss of useful tensile ductility. Here we report the observation of an exceptional tensile ductility in crystalline copper/copper–zirconium glass nanolaminates. These nanocrystalline–amorphous nanolaminates exhibit a high flow stress of 1.09 ± 0.02 GPa, a nearly elastic-perfectly plastic behavior without necking, and a tensile elongation to failure of 13.8 ± 1.7%, which is six to eight times higher than that typically observed in conventional crystalline–crystalline nanolaminates (<2%) and most other nanocrystalline materials. Transmission electron microscopy and atomistic simulations demonstrate that shear banding instability no longer afflicts the 5- to 10-nm-thick nanolaminate glassy layers during tensile deformation, which also act as high-capacity sinks for dislocations, enabling absorption of free volume and free energy transported by the dislocations; the amorphous–crystal interfaces exhibit unique inelastic shear (slip) transfer characteristics, fundamentally different from those of grain boundaries. Nanoscale metallic glass layers therefore may offer great benefits in engineering the plasticity of crystalline materials and opening new avenues for improving their strength and ductility.

Additively manufactured (AM) metallic materials commonly possess substantial microscale internal stresses that manifest as intergranular and intragranular residual stresses. However, the impact of these residual stresses on the mechanical behaviour of AM materials remains unexplored. Here we combine in situ synchrotron X-ray diffraction experiments and computational modelling to quantify the lattice strains in different families of grains with specific orientations and associated intergranular residual stresses in an AM 316L stainless steel under uniaxial tension. We measure pronounced tension–compression asymmetries in yield strength and work hardening for as-printed stainless steel, and show they are associated with back stresses originating from heterogeneous dislocation distributions and resultant intragranular residual stresses. We further report that heat treatment relieves microscale residual stresses, thereby reducing the tension–compression asymmetries and altering work-hardening behaviour. This work establishes the mechanistic connections between the microscale residual stresses and mechanical behaviour of AM stainless steel.