Boron electrical conductivity

Amorphous boron has not been obtained in the pure state. Crystalline boron is a black powder, extremely hard, with a metallic appearance but with very low electrical conductivity. 

Boron is an extremely hard refractory soHd having a hardness of 9.3 on Mohs scale and a very low (1.5 x 10 ohm cm ) room temperature electrical conductivity so that boron is classified as a metalloid or semiconductor. These values are for the a-rhombohedral form. 

Zinc—bromine storage batteries (qv) are under development as load-leveling devices in electric utilities (64). Photovoltaic batteries have been made of selenium or boron doped with bromine. Graphite fibers and certain polymers can be made electrically conductive by being doped with bromine. Bromine is used in quartz—haUde light bulbs. Bromine is used to etch aluminum, copper, and semi-conductors. Bromine and its salts are known to recover gold and other precious metals from their ores. Bromine can be used to desulfurize fine coal (see Coal conversion processes). Table 5 shows estimates of the primary uses of bromine. 

For a large number of applications involving ceramic materials, electrical conduction behavior is dorninant. In certain oxides, borides (see Boron compounds), nitrides (qv), and carbides (qv), metallic or fast ionic conduction may occur, making these materials useful in thick-film pastes, in fuel cell apphcations (see Fuel cells), or as electrodes for use over a wide temperature range. Superconductivity is also found in special ceramic oxides, and these materials are undergoing intensive research. Other classes of ceramic materials may behave as semiconductors (qv). These materials are used in many specialized apphcations including resistance heating elements and in devices such as rectifiers, photocells, varistors, and thermistors. 

The determination of precise physical properties for elemental boron is bedevilled by the twin difficulties of complex polymorphism and contamination by irremovable impurities. Boron is an extremely hard refractory solid of high mp, low density and very low electrical conductivity. Crystalline forms are dark red in transmitted light and powdered forms are black. The most stable ()3-rhombohedral) modification has mp 2092°C (exceeded only by C among the non-metals), bp 4000°C, d 2.35 gcm (a-rhombohedral form 2.45gcm ), A77sublimation 570kJ per mol of B, electrical conductivity at room temperature 1.5 x 10 ohm cm- . 

The diagonal line or stairway that starts to the left of boron in the periodic table (Figure 2.7, page 31) separates metals from nonmetals. The more than 80 elements to the left and below that line, shown in blue in the table, have the properties of metals in particular, they have high electrical conductivities. Elements above and to the right of the stairway are nonmetals (yellow) about 18 elements fit in that category. 

Imaging SIMS. Steeds et al. (1999) included this technique in their study of the distribution of boron introduced into diamond, where it is a well-established dopant that controls the electrical conductivity. SIMS was performed with a field-emission liquid gallium ion source interfaced to a magnetic sector mass spectrometer capable of about 0.1 pm spatial resolution. 

Boron nitride, in view of its unique properties, namely absence of electrical conductivity, oxidation resistance, optical transparency, and high neutron capture cross-section for special applications, offers advantages over other ceramics. Thus, for the... 

The transitory existence of alkylcarbonium ions in alkyl halide-Lewis acid halide systems has been inferred from a variety of observations, sueh as vapour-pressure depressions of OHsCl and C2H5CI in the presence of gallium chloride (Brown et al., 1950), the electric conductivities of aluminium chloride in ethyl chloride (Wertyporoch and Firla, 1933) and of alkyl fluorides in boron trifluoride (Olah et al., 1957), as well as the... 

Surfaces of synthetic diamond, doped with boron, are electrically conducting and show promise as very inert elccfrode materials [24]. Boron carbide (B C) has been used as an anode material but tliis cannot be conveniently prepared with a large surface area [25]. 

A main feature of the melt polymerization is the sharp increase in electrical conductivity at temperatures (>220°C) where polymerization occurs. This observation together with those described above support a cationic polymerization mechanism based on ionization of a P—Cl bond (Eq. 7-113) followed by electrophilic attack of P+ on monomer (Eq. 7-114). Boron... 

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