Effect of boron sources on the growth of boron arsenide single crystals by chemical vapor transport

Abstract

Since the first-principles calculations were reported, which indicate that zinc blende boron arsenide (BAs) has an unusually high room-temperature thermal conductivity, close to that of diamond, extensive theoretical and experimental effort has been dedicated to research on BAs. Although great achievements have been made recently in growing large single crystals demonstrating room-temperature thermal conductivity reaching 1300 W m−1 K−1, further optimization of the crystal quality has been stunted because of the purity of the boron source and contamination of the quartz tube. Here, we focus on the effects of different boron sources on the final BAs products synthesized via the chemical vapor transport method. We find that, compared to the reported methods that produce good BAs crystals from high-purity boron, using BAs crystals as the source material may contribute to further improvement. We believe that the current research can provide crucial support for further development of the BAs single-crystal growth techniques.