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Boron Carbide Nanoparticles/Nanopowder and Their Applications

Boron carbide which has the chemical formula of B4C is one of the hardest materials among the ceramics materials after diamond and boron nitride. In addition to its hardness, it has high thermal stability, low density, chemical inertness and neutron capture property. At temperature above 1200 oC, its hardness exceeds that of the diamond. Thus, it is a crucial material for high technology applications such as abrasive for polishing and grinding media, ceramic amour applications for personal purpose and equipment, blasting nozzles, ceramic bearings, semiconductor applications for dielectric barriers, medical and nuclear applications.
B4C (Boron Carbide) Nanoparticles (99.5+%, 40-60nm, Hexagonal) show an outstanding hardness among the ceramic materials. Therefore, boron carbide nanoparticles/nanopowder are a suitable material for many high performance applications. Boron carbide nanoparticles/nanopowder can be used as polishing, lapping and grinding material for hard materials such as cemented carbides and technical ceramics. When boron carbide is sintered, it is also used as blasting nozzles, ceramic bearing and wire drawing dies due to excellent wear resistance. Due to high impact resistance and low specific weight, boron carbide nanoparticles/nanopowder are suitable for body and vehicle armor to protect against projectile and ballistic threats.
Boron carbide nanoparticles/nanopowder can also be used as coating materials for various materials and applications such as coating the blade tools and they are used for cutting various alloys such as stainless steel, titanium and aluminum alloys. Also, boron carbide nanoparticles/nanopowder can be used as a thin film on the ultra high density disk drives. Moreover, stainless steel tools can be coated via plasma-sprayed boron carbide to provide protection against to thermal shocks from destruction load. Boron carbide nanoparticles/nanopowder are used in many nuclear application as control rod, shielding material and neutron detectors due to its neutron capture properties [15]. High boron content shows good chemical inertness and high refractoriness. Moreover, boron carbide is used in nuclear fusion reactors due to its thermal conductivity and thermal shock resistance. There are also several aerospace applications that currently use boron carbide nanoparticles/nanopowder instead of Be/Be alloys due to its high stiffness, low density and low thermal expansion. Boron carbide nanoparticles/nanopowder are also used as reinforcement material in order to strength the medium such as in plastic matrixes.
Boron carbide nanoparticles/nanopowder are also used in electronic devices that can be operated at high temperatures such as thermoelastic devices and semiconductor applications for dielectric barriers. Nowadays many researchers work on boron carbide nanoparticles/nanopowder to obtain materials with high performance. 

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