Related papers: Boron: a Hunt for Superhard Polymorphs
Measurements of the hardness of a new high-pressure boron phase, orthorhombic {\gamma}-B28, are reported. According to the data obtained, {\gamma}-B28 has the highest hardness (~50 GPa) of all known crystalline modifications of boron.
Through the use of perturbation theory, in this work we develop a method which allows for a substantial reduction in the size of the plane-wave basis used in density-functional calculations. This method may be used for both pseudopotentials…
Engineering atomic-scale structures allows great manipulation of physical properties and chemical processes for advanced technology. We show that the B atoms deployed at the centers of honeycombs in boron sheets, borophene, behave as nearly…
The structures, stability, mechanical and electronic properties of a-boron and its twined brother a*-boron have been studied by first-principles calculations. Both a-boron and a*-boron consist of equivalent icosahedra B12 clusters in…
Two-dimensional boron monolayer (borophene) stands out from the two-dimensional atomic layered materials due to its structural flexibility, tunable electronic and mechanical properties from a large number of allotropic materials. The…
Molybdenum borides were studied theoretically using first-principles calculations, empirical total energy model and global optimization techniques to determine stable crystal structures. Our calculations reveal the structures of known Mo-B…
The recent discovery of pure boron nanotubes raises questions about their detailed atomic structure. Previous simulations predicted tubular structures with smooth or puckered surfaces. Here, we present some novel results based on ab initio…
By means of variable-composition evolutionary algorithm coupled with density functional theory and in combination with aberration-corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy experiments, we have studied and characterized the…
In the present paper we performed the analysis of available data on structural, thermodynamic and mechanical properties of B6O. Although the compound is known for half a century and has been extensively studied, many properties of this…
Borophene (two-dimensional boron sheet) is a new type of two-dimensional material, which was recently grown successfully on single crystal Ag substrates. In this paper, we investigate the electronic structure and bonding characteristics of…
The search of new superhard materials has received a strong impulse by industrial demands for low-cost alternatives to diamond and $c$-BN, such as metal borides. In this Letter we introduce a new family of superhard materials, "fused…
Different phases of solid boron under high pressure are studied by first principles calculations. The $\alpha$-B$_{12}$ structure is found to be stable up to 270 GPa. Its semiconductor band gap (1.72 eV) decreases continuously to zero…
The 8-Pmmn borophene, a boron analogue of graphene, hosts tilted and anisotropic massless Dirac fermion quasiparticles owing to the presence of the distorted graphene-like sublattice. First-principles calculations show that the stacked…
By electron and X-ray diffraction we establish that the CrB$_4$ compound discovered over 40 years ago crystallizes in the $oP10$ (\emph{Pnnm}) structure, in disagreement with previous experiments but in agreement with a recent…
Boron nitride (BN) is a structurally versatile insulator since it can be found in several crystalline structures with interesting mechanical and electrical properties, making this material attractive for technological applications. Seeking…
The element boron belongs, together with lithium and beryllium, to a known trio of important elements for the study of evolutionary processes in low mass stars. Because B is the least fragile of this trio to be destroyed in the stellar…
Using a systematic search algorithm we identify several types of point defects in the boron fullerene with 80 atoms. All these point defect leave the cage structure intact. In addition the cage structure is also very stable with respect to…
In this work, we foresee the structure of a new class of borophenes with smaller 2D densities of atoms than those explored so far for 2D boron crystals. Boron atoms in the porous borophenes tend to be $5$-coordinated in contrast to commonly…
The past decade has witnessed numerous discoveries of two-dimensional (2D) semimetals and insulators, whereas 2D metals are rarely identified. Borophene, a monolayer boron sheet, has recently emerged as a perfect 2D metal with unique…
We report on a novel reconstruction of the alpha-boron (111) surface, discovered using an ab initio evolution structure search, and reveal that it has an unexpected neat structure and much lower surface energy than the recently proposed…