Structural characterization of neutron irradiated hexagonal boron-10 nitride-15 single crystals
Abstract
The negatively charged boron vacancy (VB−) in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is a promising quantum defect that can be used to sense pressure, temperature, and magnetic field with high spatial resolution. hBN enriched with the boron-10 and nitrogen-15 isotopes, denoted h10B15N, has good contrast and coherence for quantum sensing because nitrogen-15 has nuclear spin (1/2), reducing hyperfine interactions. Boron vacancies can be generated by neutron irradiation, which causes the transmutation of the boron-10 isotope to lithium-7. In this study, the ancillary structural, compositional, and mechanical properties of h10B15N crystals that have been subjected to neutron irradiation fluences from 1.4 × 1016 to 8.4 × 1017 n/cm2 were thoroughly characterized. Besides creating VB−, the process also induces other defects that generate strain in the crystal lattice. In turn, the mechanical properties of these crystals change drastically. Investigated here are the visual changes, lattice integrity, composition, crystal strain, and elastic constants (C33 and C66) to assess how these characteristics change as a function of neutron fluence.
Article Details
Journal Info
Applied Physics Letters
American Institute of Physics
Authors (15)
Thomas Poirier
Josh Avery
Tim Taylor Department of Chemical Engineering, Kansas State University 1 , Manhattan, Kansas 66502,
Dmitri Zakharov
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Center for Functional Nanomaterials 2 , Upton, New York 11973,
Kim Kisslinger
Judith Yang
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Center for Functional Nanomaterials 2 , Upton, New York 11973,
Jong Keum
Kristie Koski
Department of Chemistry, University of California 4 , Davis, California 95616,
Sonder Wilson
Materials Science and Engineering, University of Washington 5 , Seattle, Washington 98195,
Guodong Ren
State Key Laboratory of Genetics and Development of Complex Phenotypes, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
Juan Carlos Idrobo
Florie Mesple
Department of Physics, University of Washington 6 , Seattle, Washington 98195,
Ellis Thompson
Department of Physics, University of Washington 6 , Seattle, Washington 98195,
Matthew Yankowitz
Lei R. Cao
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University 7 , Columbus, Ohio 43210,
James H. Edgar