Phase Stability of Hexagonal/Cubic Boron Nitride Nanocomposites
Abhijit Biswas, Rui Xu, Joyce Christiansen‐Salameh, Eugene Jeong, Gustavo A. Alvarez, Chenxi Li, Anand B. Puthirath, Bin Gao, Arushi Garg, Tia Gray, Harikishan Kannan, Xiang Zhang, Jacob Elkins, Tymofii S. Pieshkov, Róbert Vajtai, A. Glen Birdwell, Mahesh R. Neupane, Bradford B. Pate, Tony Ivanov, Elias Garratt, Pengcheng Dai, Hanyu Zhu, Zhiting Tian, Pulickel M. Ajayan
Abstract
Boron nitride (BN) is an exceptional material, and among its polymorphs, two-dimensional (2D) hexagonal and three-dimensional (3D) cubic BN (h-BN and c-BN) phases are most common. The phase stability regimes of these BN phases are still under debate, and phase transformations of h-BN/c-BN remain a topic of interest. Here, we investigate the phase stability of 2D/3D h-BN/c-BN nanocomposites and show that the coexistence of two phases can lead to strong nonlinear optical properties and low thermal conductivity at room temperature. Furthermore, spark-plasma sintering of the nanocomposite shows complete phase transformation to 2D h-BN with improved crystalline quality, where 3D c-BN possibly governs the nucleation and growth kinetics. Our demonstration might be insightful in phase engineering of BN polymorph-based nanocomposites with desirable properties for optoelectronics and thermal energy management applications.