Review of transition-metal diboride thin films

Computational prediction of novel MAB phases

“…The screening of ternary MAB phases demonstrated in Paper I reveals that a handful (10) of phases are stable and likely to be synthesized even though only two, orthorhombic and hexagonal, crystal symmetries were considered. In addition, a large set (23) phases were considered metastable.…”

“…Boron-based materials have extensively been studied, mainly due to the excellent mechanical properties. Due to these properties, the interest for boride-based materials have dramatically increased within both academia and industry where binary [10], ternary [11,12] and quaternary [13] compounds have all been thoroughly investigated. Boride-based materials may hold a solution to the development of sustainable wear resistant materials necessary to tackle the stringent environmental legislations.…”

Epitaxial Growth of Magnetron‐Sputtered ZrB2 Films on Si(100) Substrates

“…The broadening of the present rocking curve peak could be from excess B in our deposited ZrB 2 films, seen from a B:Zr ratio of 2.3, with likely pending segregation of B to grain boundaries, [ 23,24 ] together with the formation of domain boundaries to 102‐oriented grains, both disturbing the lattice. Sputtering of boron‐rich TMB 2 films is frequently reported in the literature [ 6 ] and shows a strong tendency for B to segregate to the grain boundaries. For the closely related TiB 2 , we note that the B:Ti ratio depends on the pressure‐distance product [ 25 ] and has been tuned to 2.0 through an increase of the Ar pressure from 5 to 20 mTorr at a substrate‐to‐target distance of 65 mm (requiring strong external magnets to maintain dense films).…”

“…While TMB 2 films were not implemented as diffusion barriers and interconnects in the semiconductor industry, they attract attention as refractory or protective coatings, conductive functional ceramics, [ 6 ] and as superconductors. [ 7–9 ] In particular, ZrB 2 can be made superconducting by doping, [ 10–13 ] stressing the need for being able to grow well‐defined epitaxial ZrB 2 films.…”

Quantitative Depth Profiling Using Online-Laser Ablation of Solid Samples in Liquid (LASIL) to Investigate the Oxidation Behavior of Transition Metal Borides

“…The resulting shortening of the material’s lifetime and the limitation of its application range can be addressed by deposition of protective coatings. In this context, transition metal diborides are among the most promising candidates that have gained attention in recent years [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. The reason for this behaviour is the boron–metal bond allowing for a favorable combination of metal–ceramics properties such as high strength elastic modulus with high thermal and electrical conductivity [ 4 , 5 ].…”