Abstract
Attributed to their specific atomic bonding, the soft, graphite-like, hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and its superhard, diamond-like, cubic polymorph (c-BN) are important technological materials with a wide range of applications1. At high pressure and temperature, h-BN can directly transform to a hexagonal close-packed polymorph (w-BN)2 that can be partially quenched after releasing pressure. Previous theoretical calculations3,4,5 and experimental measurements (primarily on quenched samples)6,7,8,9 provided substantial information on the transition, but left unsettled questions due to the lack of in situ characterization at high pressures. Using inelastic X-ray scattering to probe the boron and nitrogen near K-edge spectroscopy, here we report the first observation of the conversion process of boron and nitrogen sp2- and p-bonding to sp3 and the directional nature of the sp3 bonding. In combination with in situ X-ray diffraction probe, we have further clarified the structure transformation mechanism. The present archetypal example opens two enormous, element-specific, research areas on high-pressure bonding evolutions of boron and nitrogen; each of the two elements and their respective compounds have displayed a wealth of intriguing pressure-induced phenomena10 that result from bonding changes, including metallization11,12, superconductivity13,14, semiconductivity15, polymerization16 and superhardness2,17,18.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank GSECARS, HPCAT, APS and the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) for beam time and J. Hu for help with the x-ray diffraction experiment conducted at the beamline X17C of NSLS. Use of the HPCAT facility was supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE)-Basic Energy Sciences, DOE-National Nuclear Security Administration, NSF, Department of Defense-Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, and the W.M. Keck Foundation.
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Meng, Y., Mao, Hk., Eng, P. et al. The formation of sp3 bonding in compressed BN. Nature Mater 3, 111–114 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1060
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1060
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