Superhard material promises next-generation electronics

By producing bulk crystals of wurtzite boron nitride, scientists have opened the door for its use in advanced electronic devices

Millimetre-sized crystals of the superhard semiconductor wurtzite boron nitride (w-BN) can now be fabricated at atmospheric pressure and moderate temperatures.

As hard as a diamond and having a wide electronic band gap and high thermal conductivity, w-BN is a metastable form of BN that is attracting considerable attention for potential use in next-generation electronics.

Current methods for producing w-BN involve direct conversion of hexagonal BN (h-BN) at high pressures. However, the bulk of the material returns to its h-BN form when the pressure is released, leaving only small amounts of w-BN crystals with micrometre-sized grains.

By introducing planar defects into the crystals, a team of scientists led by researchers from the Advanced Institute for Materials Research at Tohoku University was able to delay the transformation from w-BN to h-BN and produce millimetre-sized crystals of w-BN.

This article was first published by Springer Nature. Read the original article here.