Peer-reviewedCC BY-NC-NDNano letters
Fluorine-Assisted Stabilization of Cubic Phase Boron Nitride Polycrystalline Solids.
15 affiliations
- 1Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas77005, United States.
- 2Laboratory for Physical Sciences, College Park, Maryland20740, United States.
- 3Karlsruhe Nano Micro Facility (KNMFi) & Institute of Nanotechnology (INT), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kaiserstr. 12, 76131Karlsruhe, Germany.
- 4Applied Physics Graduate Program, Smalley-Curl Institute, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77005, United States.
- 5National High Magnetic Field Laboratory , Tallahassee, Florida32310, United States.
- 6Department of Physics and Texas Center for Superconductivity (TcSUH), University of Houston, Houston, Texas77004, United States.
- 7Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, 5 King's College Road, Toronto, M5S 3G8, Canada.
- 8Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland20742, United States.
- 9SIMS Laboratory, Shared Equipment Authority, Rice University, Houston, Texas77005, United States.
- 10Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas77005, United States.
- 11Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, 5 King's College Road, Toronto, M5S 3G8, Canada.
- 12Vereshchagin Institute of High-Pressure Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 14 Kaluzhskoe Shosse, Troitsk, Moscow108840, Russia.
- 13Rice Advanced Materials Institute, Rice University, Houston, Texas77005, United States.
- 14Departments of Physics and Chemistry and Biochemistry, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida32306, United States.
- 15Institute of Materials Science, Technical University Darmstadt (TUDa), Peter-Grünberg-Str. 2, 64287Darmstadt, Germany.
Abstract
The synthesis of cubic boron nitride (cBN) solids by consolidation of cBN powders at high pressure and high temperature (HPHT) is challenging, as it leads to the hexagonal BN (hBN) phase. Here we report an HPHT synthesis of polycrystalline fluorinated cBN (F-cBN) solids that show twinned nanodomains, the presence of F at the grain boundaries, and excellent mechanical hardness and second-order nonlinear susceptibility. In contrast to pure diamagnetic cBN, we found that F-cBN is paramagnetic at room temperature, as confirmed by electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, suggesting the role of defects in tuning the magnetic properties of cBN. Density functional theory calculations reveal that F stabilizes the cBN phase by passivating the dangling bonds and, in addition, forms substitutional defects (FN) leading to FN-VB defect complexes that generate local magnetic moments. These properties of F-cBN might lead to new applications of cBN and also open a pathway to synthesize new metastable phase materials with emergent properties.
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BibTeX
@article{biswas2026fluorineassisted,
title = {{Fluorine-Assisted Stabilization of Cubic Phase Boron Nitride Polycrystalline Solids.}},
author = {Abhijit Biswas and Ivan Naumov and Rajib Sahu and T A M Ragib Shahriar and Jakub Hrubý and Sudaice Kazibwe and Shuo Yang and Sai Krishna Narayanan and Jishnu Murukeshan and Töllner Maximilian and Shreyasi Chattopadhyay and Tanguy Terlier and Ching-Wu Chu and Lizhong Lang and Yu Zou and Vladimir P Filonenko and Tobin Filleter and Liangzi Deng and Hanyu Zhu and Stephen Hill and Christian Kübel and Valery N Khabashesku and Pratibha Dev and Pulickel M Ajayan},
journal = {Nano letters},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1021/acs.nanolett.6c02285},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42917376},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Fluorine-Assisted Stabilization of Cubic Phase Boron Nitride Polycrystalline Solids.
AU - Abhijit Biswas
AU - Ivan Naumov
AU - Rajib Sahu
AU - T A M Ragib Shahriar
AU - Jakub Hrubý
AU - Sudaice Kazibwe
AU - Shuo Yang
AU - Sai Krishna Narayanan
AU - Jishnu Murukeshan
AU - Töllner Maximilian
AU - Shreyasi Chattopadhyay
AU - Tanguy Terlier
AU - Ching-Wu Chu
AU - Lizhong Lang
AU - Yu Zou
AU - Vladimir P Filonenko
AU - Tobin Filleter
AU - Liangzi Deng
AU - Hanyu Zhu
AU - Stephen Hill
AU - Christian Kübel
AU - Valery N Khabashesku
AU - Pratibha Dev
AU - Pulickel M Ajayan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
JO - Nano letters
DO - 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6c02285
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42917376
AB - The synthesis of cubic boron nitride (cBN) solids by consolidation of cBN powders at high pressure and high temperature (HPHT) is challenging, as it leads to the hexagonal BN (hBN) phase. Here we report an HPHT synthesis of polycrystalline fluorinated cBN (F-cBN) solids that show twinned nanodomains, the presence of F at the grain boundaries, and excellent mechanical hardness and second-order nonlinear susceptibility. In contrast to pure diamagnetic cBN, we found that F-cBN is paramagnetic at room temperature, as confirmed by electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, suggesting the role of defects in tuning the magnetic properties of cBN. Density functional theory calculations reveal that F stabilizes the cBN phase by passivating the dangling bonds and, in addition, forms substitutional defects (FN) leading to FN-VB defect complexes that generate local magnetic moments. These properties of F-cBN might lead to new applications of cBN and also open a pathway to synthesize new metastable phase materials with emergent properties.
SN - 1530-6984
SN - 1530-6992
ER -