Characteristics of nanometric boron nitride

2007/05/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Nanoteknologia
• Fisika

The UPV Materials Physics team, the Mixed Materials Physics Center and the European Center for Mechanical Spectroscopy (ETSF) have investigated for the first time all the properties of boron nitride on a nanometric scale.

A good knowledge and control of the properties of boron nitride will allow to design new materials based on this compound. Boron nitride is a binary compound with boron and nitrogen in the same proportion, used in reactor coatings and insulating materials. It has excellent mechanical and electronic properties in the nanoscale, with high resistance and being able to emit blue light. This increases the memory capacity of DVDs, antennas, lasers and other optometric devices. In addition, it forms macroscopic structures through weak van der Waals interactions.

Specifically, the UPV-EHU team has shown that weak interactions such as van der Waals affect the nanostructures of boron nitride and that boron nitride has nearby blue and ultraviolet light absorption and emission properties. These results are important for understanding the properties of certain carbon structures, such as nanotubes, in some applications of nanoelectronics, photonics and biomedicine (sensors, biological labels, etc. ). All of these areas are very current worldwide and great progress is expected in the short and medium term.