Twin structures of rhombohedral and cubic boron nitride prepared by chemical vapor deposition method

Abstract Nanoparticles with a rhombohedral boron nitride (r-BN) structure were synthesized by a chemical vapor deposition method from BCl 3 –NH 3 –H 2 gas system at a temperature of 1600 °C and a total gas pressure of 3–5 Torr on the graphite substrates. The r-BN nanoparticles with the size of 50–1000 nm showed {1 0 1}, {1 1 3} and {0 0 1} twin structures. Cubic BN was also produced from r-BN under high pressure and high temperature, and {1 1 1} twin structure was observed. Electron diffraction patterns calculated based on the atomic structure models of these twin structures agreed well with the observations.