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Determination of Phase Stability of Elemental Boron
Author(s) -
White Mary Anne,
Cerqueira Anthony B.,
Whitman Catherine A.,
Johnson Michel B.,
Ogitsu Tadashi
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.201409169
Subject(s) - boron , materials science , phase (matter) , inorganic chemistry , chemical physics , chemistry , organic chemistry
Abstract Boron is an important element, used in applications from superhard materials to superconductors. Boron exists in several forms (allotropes) and, surprisingly, it was not known which form (α or β) is stable at ambient conditions. Through experiment, we quantify the relative stability of α‐boron and β‐boron as a function of temperature. The ground‐state energies of α‐boron and β‐boron are nearly identical. For all temperatures up to 2000 K, the complicated β‐boron structure is more stable than the simpler α‐boron structure at ambient pressure. Below 1000 K, β‐boron is entropically stabilized with respect to α‐boron owing to its partially occupied sites, whereas at higher temperatures β‐boron is enthalpically stabilized with respect to α‐boron. We show that α‐boron only becomes stable on application of pressure.