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Nature view
Research
highlight from the NPG family of journals.
Under pressure: Superhard materials
 For
the past 50 years, the search has been on for alternative superhard
materials — as hard or even harder than diamond. Compressed boron
nitride — formed by putting soft hexagonal boron nitride under high
pressure and temperature — is one of these technologically important
materials. In this month's Nature Materials, Yue Meng and
colleagues use inelastic X-ray scattering to probe the atomic bonding
changes that occur when boron nitride is compressed. Understanding the
mechanisms involved in this conversion may eventually lead to an improved
understanding of the mechanical and electronic properties of nitrogen,
boron and their compounds.
letters
The
formation of sp3 bonding in compressed BN
Y. MENG et al.
Nature Materials 3, 111; February 2004
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