The Hardest Superconducting Metal Nitride

Scientific Reports
Shanmin WangYusheng Zhao

Abstract

Transition-metal (TM) nitrides are a class of compounds with a wide range of properties and applications. Hard superconducting nitrides are of particular interest for electronic applications under working conditions such as coating and high stress (e.g., electromechanical systems). However, most of the known TM nitrides crystallize in the rock-salt structure, a structure that is unfavorable to resist shear strain, and they exhibit relatively low indentation hardness, typically in the range of 10-20 GPa. Here, we report high-pressure synthesis of hexagonal δ-MoN and cubic γ-MoN through an ion-exchange reaction at 3.5 GPa. The final products are in the bulk form with crystallite sizes of 50 - 80 μm. Based on indentation testing on single crystals, hexagonal δ-MoN exhibits excellent hardness of ~30 GPa, which is 30% higher than cubic γ-MoN (~23 GPa) and is so far the hardest among the known metal nitrides. The hardness enhancement in hexagonal phase is attributed to extended covalently bonded Mo-N network than that in cubic phase. The measured superconducting transition temperatures for δ-MoN and cubic γ-MoN are 13.8 and 5.5 K, respectively, in good agreement with previous measurements.

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Citations

Mar 23, 2017·Inorganic Chemistry·Changchun WangPinwen Zhu
Apr 30, 2019·Philosophical Transactions. Series A, Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences·Paul F McMillan
May 7, 2020·Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics : PCCP·Chunhong MaGuochun Yang
Nov 13, 2020·Nanoscale·Azkar Saeed AhmadShanmin Wang
Feb 17, 2021·The Journal of Chemical Physics·Giyeok LeeAloysius Soon
Jul 17, 2018·Journal of the American Chemical Society·Aria Mansouri TehraniJakoah Brgoch
Aug 27, 2021·Inorganic Chemistry·Chung-Ching ChangMasashi Hasegawa
Aug 22, 2018·ACS Nano·Jing PengYi Xie

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
x–ray
scanning electron microscopy
x–ray diffraction

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