Xiang-Feng Zhou

New Capabilities

Led the team that designed the two-step precursor synthesis

For more than half a century, every boron crystal chemists could make was diamond-hard, brittle, and nearly insulating. A team at Yanshan University in China has now reported a phase that breaks all three patterns: pure boron that conducts electricity about ten million times better than standard boron and deforms plastically by roughly 23% instead of shattering.

Updated 2 hours ago