Determination the Elastic Properties of Cubic Boron Nitride Films by Brillouin Scattering (CAT#: STEM-ST-0093-YJL)

Introduction

Cubic boron nitride (cBN) is the second hardest material next to diamond. It has attracted much research interest by its extreme physical and chemical properties, such as super high hardness, and elastic moduli, high atomic density, and chemical inertness. The cBN films have several advantages over diamond films and many technological potential properties characteristic for hard coating, however despite recent progress, significant barriers still exist to commercial production of cBN films. The thickness of these films commonly ranges from a few tens of nanometers up to the order of 1 mm, and therefore it is challenging to characterize the elastic properties of such thin films. Elastic properties of the cBN films need to be determined experimentally because they depend strongly on the synthesis conditions, and these properties cannot be derived from theoretical considerations alone.