CBN cubic boron nitride

CBN cubic boron nitride

Cubic boron nitride (CBN) , is a synthetic super hard material, its atomic structure is similar to the carbon atomic structure in diamond, so it has high density characteristics, hardness second only to diamond, mainly used as abrasive and tool materials.

As early 1957, researchers from GE Company in the United States used artificial methods to synthesize cubic boron nitride for the first time under ultra-high temperature and high pressure conditions, but natural cubic boron nitride has not been found, so cubic boron nitride is considered to be a synthetic product and does not exist in nature.

Until 2009, scientists from the University of California, Riverside and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, with colleagues from scientific institutions in China and Germany, found the mineral in chromium-rich rocks in the ancient Marine crust about 306 kilometers underground in the southern mountains of the Tibetan Plateau in China. The crystals formed at temperatures of about 1,300 degrees Celsius and pressures of 118,430 atmospheres.

In August 2013, the International Mineralogical Association officially recognized the new mineral, cubic boron nitride.

Cubic boron nitride has a similar crystal structure to diamond, and the lattice coefficients of the two are similar (0.3567nm for diamond and 0.3615nm for cubic boron nitride).

Cubic boron nitride is a compound composed of nitrogen atoms and boron atoms, with a chemical composition of 43.6% boron and 56.4% nitrogen. From the arrangement of atoms in the crystal, the structure of cubic boron nitride is composed of a face-centered cubic lattice composed of B atoms and a face-centered cubic lattice composed of N atoms staggered by 1/4 along the diagonal.