|Two Novel Ultra-Incompressible Materials| |Wednesday, 29 June
2011 00:00| Some current challenges in aerospace engineering and
fission/fusion applications require materials that are
mechanically and chemically stable at extreme conditions. One
such class of materials is ultrahigh-temperature ceramics, which
are often binary transition-metal carbides, borides, or
nitrides. It is therefore of great interest to understand how to
synthesize new compounds of this type. A research team from
Germany, the United Kingdom, and Berkeley Lab working at ALS
Beamlines 12.2.2 and 12.3.2 has now synthesized and
characterized two novel bulk rhenium nitrides, Re2N and Re3N.
Both phases are extremely incompressible, and Re3N is also
better placed for potential technological applications than are
other incompressible transition-metal carbides and nitrides of
the period-six elements because it can be formed at relatively
moderate pressures and temperatures. The introduction of smaller
atoms such as boron, nitrogen, or carbon int