Preparation and characterization of amorphous boron powder with high activity

The amorphous boron powders with high activity were prepared by the high-energy ball milling-combustion synthesis method. The effects of the milling rate and milling time on the crystallinity, microscopic morphology and reactivity of amorphous boron powder were studied. The results show that the crystallinity of amorphous nano-boron powder is only 22.5%, and its purity reaches 92.86%. The high-energy ball milling can significantly refine boron powder particle sizes, whose average particle sizes are smaller than 50 nm, and specific surface areas are of up to 70.03 m2/g. When the transmission electron beam irradiates the samples, they rapidly melt. It can be seen that the monomer amorphous boron size is less than 30 nm from the specimen melting traces, which indicates that the samples have high reactivity.