Journal of the American Ceramic Society, Vol.95, No.7, 2089-2092, 2012
Microstructure of Face Centered Cubic (fcc) TiB Powder Synthesized by Boronizing of Ti Powder
High resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques were used to examine the crystal structure of TiB ceramic powder synthesized by a Ti-Boronizing method. The HRTEM analysis revealed that the synthesized titanium boride has fcc crystal structure, with titanium and boron atoms alternatively arranged like Na and Cl ions in NaCl-type lattice. The crystal structure of this boride phase, denoted as fcc-TiB in the paper, was confirmed also by XRD analysis and agrees with the data reported in the card PDF # 06-641. This card is present in the powder diffraction file (PDF) database, but seldom quoted in literature because the typical crystal structure of TiB that forms in situ as a phase is orthorhombic. The present work reports new experimental data on the crystal properties of pure fcc-TiB not yet reported in the literature. The lattice parameter of fcc-TiB, calculated from XRD analysis, is a(0)=4.245 angstrom.