• Godec, Yann Le
• Solozhenko, Vladimir L.
• Kurakevych, Oleksandr O.

Abstract

Nanomaterials in the form of zero-, one-, and two-dimensional nanostructures make a high-impact background for both science and technology. At the same time, the synthesis of bulk nanostructured materials remains the least-explored but challenging domain that allows combination of desired physical, chemical, and mechanical properties and gives rise to nanoelectronics, nanomechanics, bandgap engineering, etc. The common methods of soft chemistry allow nanoparticles to be obtained whose direct sintering unavoidably leads to grain growth and loss of nanostructures. Extreme pressure is a parameter of choice to suppress the self-diffusion responsible for high-temperature recrystallization. Here we report the synthesis of high-purity bulk nanostructured cubic boron nitride (cBN) with a unique combination of properties (ultrahardness, high thermal and chemical stability, etc.) by direct phase transformation of graphite-like BN with an "ideal random layer" structure[1] at 20 GPa and 1770 K.

Topics

• nanoparticle
• impedance spectroscopy
• grain
• phase
• nitride
• chemical stability
• Boron
• two-dimensional
• random
• recrystallization
• sintering
• grain growth