An urgent demand for electronic and optoelectronic devices able to work in extreme environments promotes a series of research studies on semiconductor materials. Cubic boron phosphide (BP) as a semiconductor material with excellent characteristics shows great application potential. However, since the synthesis conditions required are difficult to achieve and the growth mechanism of BP is still unclear, there are few reports on the basic properties of BP and pure isotope BP, resulting in a narrow understanding of their special physical properties. Here, we successfully obtained highly pure isotopic 10BP crystals by a vapor–liquid–solid (VLS) method unconventionally designed, which successfully overcomes the thermodynamic conflict between the high melting point of the boron element and low sublimation temperature of the phosphorus element. The 10BP achieved owns an aspect ratio as high as 104 and a hardness up to 41 GPa. Besides, as an indirect bandgap semiconductor, it has ultrawide red emission spectra, a p-type conductivity with extremely low resistivity, and excellent photoelectronic and piezoelectric characteristics. Furthermore, compared with other superhard semiconductors like cubic BN and diamond, 10BP has an obvious advantage of lower growth temperature (1200 °C). All these characteristics confirm the prospects owned by 10BP in its applications to the field of high-conductivity, optoelectronic, strain-sensing, and superhard semiconductors.
Cubic boride crystals with pure boron isotopes have attracted great attention in recent years. Here, high-quality cubic boron phosphide single crystals with isotopic 10B and a maximum width reaching 1.5 mm are grown via the high-temperature molten salt method. An interesting phenomenon that there are many discrete sharp lines in the low-temperature (4–80 K) photoluminescence spectra is observed. Besides, as temperature increases, the luminescence intensity of these sharp lines shows a nonmonotonic decay with two different trends exhibited. Based on analyses, the sharp-line emission originates from phonon-assisted donor–acceptor pair radiative recombination. The nonmonotonic decay is affected by the number of assisting phonons and the degree of thermal ionization under the effect of temperature, and the different decay trends are attributed to the effect of thermal ionization dependent on the distance between the donor and acceptor. Results obtained in this research are expected to enrich the knowledge concerning cubic boride crystals in the aspect of physical properties.
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