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Title: Thermodynamic Routes to Novel Metastable Nitrogen-Rich Nitrides

Journal Article · · Chemistry of Materials
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [3];  [4]; ORCiD logo [4];  [4];  [5]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  2. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
  3. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  4. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
  5. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)

Compared to oxides, the nitrides are relatively unexplored, making them a promising chemical space for novel materials discovery. Of particular interest are nitrogen-rich nitrides, which often possess useful semiconducting properties for electronic and optoelectronic applications. However, such nitrogen-rich compounds are generally metastable, and the lack of a guiding theory for their synthesis has limited their exploration. Here, we review the remarkable metastability of observed nitrides, and examine the thermodynamics of how reactive nitrogen precursors can stabilize metastable nitrogen-rich compositions during materials synthesis. We map these thermodynamic strategies onto a predictive computational search, training a data-mined ionic substitution algorithm specifically for nitride discovery, which we combine with grand-canonical DFT-SCAN phase stability calculations to compute stabilizing nitrogen chemical potentials. We identify several new nitrogen-rich binary nitrides for experimental investigation, notably the transition metal nitrides Mn3N4, Cr3N4, V3N4, and Nb3N5, the main group nitride SbN, and the pernitrides FeN2, CrN2, and Cu2N2. By formulating rational thermodynamic routes to metastable compounds, we expand the search space for functional technological materials beyond equilibrium phases and compositions.

Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Center for Next Generation of Materials by Design: Incorporating Metastability (CNGMD); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308; AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1390029
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1476527
Report Number(s):
NREL/JA-5K00-70097
Journal Information:
Chemistry of Materials, Vol. 29, Issue 16; ISSN 0897-4756
Publisher:
American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 93 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (26)

Achieving non-degenerate Zn 3 N 2 thin films by near room temperature sputtering deposition journal August 2019
Heteroanionic Materials by Design: Progress Toward Targeted Properties journal March 2019
Zn 2 SbN 3 : growth and characterization of a metastable photoactive semiconductor journal January 2019
Synthesis of FeN 4 at 180 GPa and its crystal structure from a submicron-sized grain journal September 2018
Fe-N system at high pressure reveals a compound featuring polymeric nitrogen chains journal July 2018
Physical descriptor for the Gibbs energy of inorganic crystalline solids and temperature-dependent materials chemistry journal October 2018
A Novel High‐Pressure Tin Oxynitride Sn 2 N 2 O journal January 2020
Machine learning for renewable energy materials journal January 2019
High-pressure synthesis of ultraincompressible hard rhenium nitride pernitride Re2(N2)(N)2 stable at ambient conditions journal July 2019
Interplay between Composition, Electronic Structure, Disorder, and Doping due to Dual Sublattice Mixing in Nonequilibrium Synthesis of ZnSnN 2 :O journal January 2019
The role of decomposition reactions in assessing first-principles predictions of solid stability journal January 2019
Freezing water at constant volume and under confinement journal February 2020
A map of the inorganic ternary metal nitrides journal June 2019
Single-crystal diffractometer coupled with double-sided laser heating system at the Extreme Conditions Beamline P02.2 at PETRAIII journal July 2019
On the Balance of Intercalation and Conversion Reactions in Battery Cathodes journal April 2018
Semiconducting cubic titanium nitride in the Th 3 P 4 structure journal January 2018
Magnetism of new metastable cobalt-nitride compounds journal January 2018
Semi-supervised machine-learning classification of materials synthesis procedures journal July 2019
High-pressure synthesis of ultraincompressible hard rhenium nitride pernitride Re2(N2)N2 stable at ambient conditions text January 2019
Fe-N system at high pressure reveals a compound featuring polymeric nitrogen chains text January 2018
Single-crystal diffractometer coupled with double-sided laser heating system at the Extreme Conditions Beamline P02.2 at PETRAIII text January 2019
High-pressure synthesis of ultraincompressible hard rhenium nitride pernitride $Re_{2}(N_{2})(N)_{2}$ stable at ambient conditions text January 2019
A Novel High‐Pressure Tin Oxynitride $Sn_{2}N_{2}O$ text January 2019
On the Balance of Intercalation and Conversion Reactions in Battery Cathodes text January 2018
A Map of the Inorganic Ternary Metal Nitrides text January 2018
Text-mined dataset of inorganic materials synthesis recipes journal October 2019

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