HPHT growth of centimeter-sized cubic boron nitride crystals

Andrey Katrusha; Weihua Peng; Jianguo Peng; Konstantin Iakoubovskii

HPHT growth of centimeter-sized cubic boron nitride crystals

Materials Science 2026-08-05 v1

Authors: Andrey Katrusha , Weihua Peng , Jianguo Peng , Konstantin Iakoubovskii

Abstract

Single crystals of cubic boron nitride (cBN) exceeding 10 mm in size were grown by the high-pressure high-temperature (HPHT) temperature-gradient method using a Ni-Cr-based solvent catalyst. Compared with the previously reported maximum crystal size of approximately 3 mm, this improvement was achieved by maintaining a stable precursor flux during one week of growth at a source temperature of 1950 {\deg}C. In contrast to diamonds, which were grown with the same HPHT cell and showed nearly isometric shapes, the cBN crystals had elongated shapes. We attribute this cBN morphology to a localized growth near the BN source due to the relatively low effective diffusivity of boron and nitrogen species in the metallic solvent.

Keywords

HPHT growth cubic boron nitride cBN crystals Ni-Cr catalyst temperature-gradient method precursor flux source temperature cBN morphology localized growth effective diffusivity

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.05058,
  title  = {HPHT growth of centimeter-sized cubic boron nitride crystals},
  author = {Andrey Katrusha and Weihua Peng and Jianguo Peng and Konstantin Iakoubovskii},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.05058},
  year   = {2026}
}