Preparation and characterization of superhard materials of crystalline carbon nitride. Final technical report, 15 May 1995--14 November 1998
Prompted by the prediction of Cohen and coworkers that beta carbon nitride may have properties similar to diamond, there have been many attempts to synthesize this hypothetical metastable material. The author successfully synthesized this material via epitaxial stabilization using TiN(111) and ZrN(111) as the growth template. The coatings were CN/TiN or CN/ZrN multilayers grown in a dual-magnetron system. The existence of beta carbon nitride in these multilayers has been confirmed with cross-section electron diffraction, Rutherford backscattering, Raman spectroscopy and near-edge x-ray diffraction. Most important, these multilayers exhibit hardness in the 50 GPa, in spite of the large volume fraction (60--70%) of the softer TiN or ZrN component. Attempts to improve the hardness by using TiB{sub 2} (which is harder than TiN and ZrN) as the growth template did not work as well because TiB{sub 2} was markedly softened by the presence of nitrogen.
- Research Organization:
- Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 350696
- Report Number(s):
- AD-A-360508/XAB; CNN: Contract F49620-95-1-0384; TRN: 91310596
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Feb 1999
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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