Lanthanum Boride

Lanthanum Boride powder is a black or purple-black powder mainly composed of lanthanum and boron elements, with high melting point, high hardness, good chemical stability and electrical properties, and has important applications in electronics, optics, metallurgy and many other fields.

Properties

Appearance Colour: It usually appears purple, which is its unique appearance feature and easy to identify.

High melting point: with a melting point of 2210℃, it is a high melting point substance, which makes it still maintain a stable structure and performance in a high temperature environment, and is suitable for high temperature working conditions.

High hardness: Lanthanum Boride has a high hardness, can withstand large mechanical stress, in the application process is not easy to be worn or deformed, can maintain good mechanical stability.

High density: density of 4.72g/cm³, higher density makes it has an advantage in some of the applications that have requirements on the density of the material.

High chemical stability: chemically stable, does not react with water, oxygen, hydrochloric acid and other common substances, but can react with nitric acid and aqua regia at room temperature; in an oxygenated atmosphere, oxidation occurs at 600 – 700℃. In vacuum atmosphere, it is easy to react with other substances or gases to form low melting point substances.

Strong anti-poisoning ability: under high temperature conditions, the substances formed on the surface of the material will be volatilised continuously, so that the low fugitive power surface of lanthanum hexaboride crystals is exposed to the emission surface, thus it has excellent anti-poisoning ability.

Electrical properties: Lanthanum Boride has high electrical conductivity, and the high conductivity makes it able to conduct current effectively, which has important application value in the electronic field. And in the high temperature emission current density, is an excellent performance of the electronic emission materials.

Crystal structure properties: Lanthanum Boride belongs to cubic crystal structure, and this special crystal structure provides it with unique physical and chemical properties.

Applications

Cathode material: Lanthanum Boride is an ideal material for making cathodes for high-power electron tubes, magnetrons, electron beams, ion beams, accelerators, etc. It is capable of providing stable electron emission, and is widely used in electron microscopes, electron-beam welding, discharge tubes, and other equipment that require high emission currents.

Semiconductor manufacturing: Lanthanum Boride can be used in semiconductor manufacturing processes such as thin film deposition and etching to improve the performance of semiconductor devices.

X-ray analysis: It can be used as a standard substance for X-ray powder diffraction and used to calibrate the instrumental broadening of diffraction peaks.

Electron microscope: used as cathode material in electron microscopes to provide high brightness and stable electron emission, thus improving the imaging quality of electron microscopes.

Coatings: Nanoscale lanthanum hexaboride can be used in coatings for polyethylene film sheets to insulate against the infrared rays of the sun.

Aerospace: Due to its high temperature resistance, high hardness and high conductivity, it can be used in high temperature components and electronic equipment in the aerospace field.

Vacuum technology field: it can be used as an absorbent material to absorb trace gases in the vacuum system and maintain the stability of the vacuum environment.

Medical field: It may have applications in radiotherapy equipment, e.g. as a material for generating specific radiation or as a component for radiation sources.