Check out our phonon engineering of boron nitride!

Posted by Mingze He on Wednesday, November 10, 2021 in News.

Our recent work on isotopically engineered boron nitride was just published in Journal of Materials Research! With isotopic engineering, the phonon frequencies as well phonon lifetimes can be modified. While the lighter atoms (10-B) shift the phonon frequencies to higher values, the heavier atoms (11-B) red-shifts the phonon frequency. As such, the phonon polaritons supported by hexagonal and cubic boron nitride can cover a wider range, for applications such as thermal emitters and chemical sensing. Additionally, we theoretically calculated the increased phonon lifetimes with the first-principles calculation.

This work is in collaboration with Dr. Lindsay at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Prof. Beechem at Sandia National Laboratories, Prof. Folland at The University of Iowa, Prof. Ueda at Fisk University, Prof. Taniguchi at International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics.