Ball-Milling Technique to Produce Massive Boride Nanoparticles

Diborides are ultra-high temperature ceramics with exceptional mechanical strength / hardness, thermal conductivity, and chemical stability. These properties make them highly valuable in applications such as refractory materials, renewable energy, hypersonic industries, and fusion reactors. Therefore, it is essential to produce large quantities of nanoparticles of these compounds. In this study, we employed ball-milling, a conventional top-down method, to fabricate nanoparticles of zirconium diboride, a representative diboride. The effects of milling time and the ball-to-material ratio were systematically investigated. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the raw compound transformed into nanomaterials after eight hours of milling and became amorphous after sixteen hours. The underlying mechanism was also discussed and materials with different crystallinity were produced by tuning experimental conditions.