Superhard Nanocrystalline Composites with Hardness of Diamond

Abstract

We summarize briefly our recently published concept for the design of novel, superhard nanocomposite materials. The fairly general validity of this design concept was documented by the preparation of a number of nanocomposites consisting of nanocrystalline transition metal nitrides and amorphous Si3N4 or BN of different chemical composition the hardness of which reached 40 to 60 GPa. More recently, we succeeded in preparation of nc-TiN/a- & nc-TiSix (x ≈︂ 2) with hardness of 80 to 105 GPa.