Source: Chemical Physics Letters, ScienceDirect
Summary:
A potential superhard material t-C8B2N2 was found and confirmed to be stable with first-principles calculations by the group of scientists from Southwest University, China. Their results show that t-C8B2N2 is highly incompressible with bulk modulus of 383.4 GPa and shear modulus of 383.0 GPa. They also determined that this material is nearly isotropy with universal anisotropy index of 0.056, and its fractional anisotropy ratio of shear modulus and bulk modulus are 0.0055 and 0.0, respectively. Dong Wang stated that the theoretical bulk modulus, shear modules, Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio and Vickers hardness of the newly developed superhard material are almost same to those of well-known superhard material c-BN.
Description:
Ultra-hard materials are used for everything from drills that bore for oil and build new roads to scratch-resistant coatings for precision instruments and the face of your watch.
Southwest University scientists are now reporting a promising new approach to designing super-hard materials, which are very difficult to scratch or crack. Their findings appear in the February 2017 issue of the journal Chemical Physics Letters.
In the conclusive statement Dong Wang mentioned that 'the developed tetragonal C8B2N2 material has very high Vickers hardness of 63.2 GPa which is comparable to c-BN.' According to hardness level of superhard material it may fall in the third position after Diamond and c-BC2N.
Read more at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cplett.2016.12.028
Journal citation: D. Wang, R. Shi, L-H. Gan, t-C8B2N2: A potential superhard material, Chemical Physics Letters (2016), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cplett.2016.12.028