Advanced Superhard Materials (ASM)

With its exceptional mechanical properties, including extremely high hardness, diamond has been the obvious material of choice for harsh operating conditions such as high-speed cutting tools, aerospace and nuclear applications. However, diamond is very rare in nature and difficult to produce in the lab since it requires high pressure and temperature to synthesize. It is no surprise, therefore, that people have been looking into the compounds that can mimic the properties of diamond to replace it in these applications.

The aim of this interdisciplinary VIP team is to produce compounds that can rival diamond in terms of mechanical properties. These materials promise to address the shortcomings of diamond and other traditional superhard materials that have been proposed to replace it. Our ultimate goal of this project is then to use the fundamental knowledge of materials science and structure-property relationship to produce inexpensive, ultra-incompressible superhard materials for applications requiring high hardness, wear resistance and other superior properties.

Our main areas of interest are:

• Development of superhard metal borides for aerospace, bioimplant, cutting tool and nuclear applications, as well as anywhere that materials are expected to operate in harsh conditions;
• Establishing a design strategy to predict materials properties by tailoring their composition, synthesis, microstructure and post processing;
• Visiting some of the established thermodynamic phase diagrams by synthesizing alloys of metal-boron binary systems;
• Making proof-of-concept tools (like laith inserts) out of bulk solid ingots of these superhard compounds, similar to the one in the picture below. 

Goals

The overall goal of this project is to design, produce and characterize superhard metal borides. These include:

1. Design ultra-incompressible, superhard compounds by fully understanding the structure-property relationship between the elements of these compounds and how stoichiometry, synthesis and processing will influence their properties;
2. Produce these compounds using various synthesis techniques such as arc melting, furnace reaction, ball milling, etc.;
3. Characterize the produced materials using advanced characterization techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermal-gravimetric analysis (TGA), microhardness testing, etc.

Key elements

Crystal engineering; compound design; elemental and phase identification; interpretation and analysis of mechanical properties; microstructure studies. 

Projects

1. Development of novel binary metal borides and test their properties;
2. Enhancing the properties of these already hard materials further by improving their intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics;
3. Development of boron-rich materials that can have superior properties compared to the current superhard materials.