Niobium Boride Powder

Niobium Boride Powder

NbB2 powder has high melting point, high hardness, high electrical conductivity and superconductivity. Niobium boride powder has potential for structural applications requiring resistance to high temperatures under severe conditions. In addition, the NbB2-CrB2 compound has been reported to have high hardness and oxidation resistance. There are many processes to produce NbB2, such as solid state reaction method, thermal oxide reduction with boron, arc melting method, chemical vapor deposition method and molten metal solution method. Recently, mechanochemical approaches have been proposed to prepare high melting point compounds, such as MoB2, CrB2, TiB2, TiN17 and TiCl7, in which an elemental powder mixture is ball milled without applying external heat. Morris and Morris reported the formation and amorphization of chromium borides and NbB2 by ball milling elemental powder mixtures. In this study, a mixture of Nb-B powder (1:2) was milled with grinding beads of different sizes in a planetary ball mill and the effect of the ball size on the preparation of NbB2 powder was examined.