The global energy and transportation industries are facing increasingly pressing sustainability challenges. Magnesium (Mg) and its alloys have advantages of being lightweight, high specific strength, good damping, high castability, and machinability, which make them very promising structural materials. However, many difficulties still need to be overcome to expand the further applications of magnesium alloys. The present report aims to review the critical advances of magnesium and its alloys worldwide in 2023 to boost the multifaceted scientific research of magnesium alloys and promote its global development and application. More than 4000 papers in the Mg and Mg alloys field were published in 2023. The bibliometric analyses indicate that the microstructure, mechanical properties, and corrosion of Mg alloys are still the main research focus. Bio-Mg materials, Mg ion batteries, and hydrogen storage Mg materials have attracted much attention. This report summarizes the progress in developing structural and functional Mg and Mg alloys and provide some suggestions for future research.

Mg-Li alloys are the lightest metallic engineering structural materials at present, and have great application potential in 3C and autonomous smart wearable, etc. However, the engineering application of ultralight Mg-Li alloys is seriously restricted because of their low strength, poor stability and high temperature performance. It is difficult to coordinate their strength, plasticity and high temperature performance. Ultralight Mg-Li-Al-Sn, Mg-Li-Al-Mn and Mg-Li-Al-Ca alloys with high strength and good ductility have been developed in our research group. The microstructure, mechanical properties of Mg-Li-Al-X alloys were investigated systematically combing the usage of many advanced microstructure characterization methods and normal tensile tests, etc. Element segregation and strain induced precipitation reaction phenomenon was found, which is beneficial to the improvement of strength and ductility, which is beneficial to obtain high strength and good plasticity simultaneously. The results from this research provide important technological support for the controlling of microstructure and mechanical properties of Mg-Li alloys.