Boron has confounded scientists for more than two centuries. Many famous scientists including Sir Humphrey Davy in London and Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thénard in Paris have announced that they had isolated boron when in fact that was not the case. This lead to a stream of discoveries and misdiscoveries. A pure sample of boron was not produced until 1909. Researchers led by Dr. Artem R. Oganov, a professor of geosciences at Stony Brook University, have added to the actual discoveries of boron. A new form of boron that is almost as hard as diamond was found. Genetic algorithm technique was used to decipher the structure of the new boron crystal.
Dr. Oganov reported that boron comes in multiple forms — as many as 16 have been reported. The structure of boron can be altered by even tiny amounts of impurities. It seems that the element has only four pure forms; alpha boron, is a dark but transparent red, beta boron is black and looks like coal, the third form is a very complicated structure known as T-192, and the fourth form is the newly discovered one.
Dr. Oganov explained the newly discovered phase of boron, which consists of two substructures -- one is a 12-atom cage, purple, the other is a two-atom dumbbell, orange. The two substructures form ionic bonds. This is the first time that ionic bonds have been seen in crystal structures consisting of a single element.
Dr. Oganov reported that boron comes in multiple forms — as many as 16 have been reported. The structure of boron can be altered by even tiny amounts of impurities. It seems that the element has only four pure forms; alpha boron, is a dark but transparent red, beta boron is black and looks like coal, the third form is a very complicated structure known as T-192, and the fourth form is the newly discovered one.
Dr. Oganov explained the newly discovered phase of boron, which consists of two substructures -- one is a 12-atom cage, purple, the other is a two-atom dumbbell, orange. The two substructures form ionic bonds. This is the first time that ionic bonds have been seen in crystal structures consisting of a single element.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/science/03boron.html?_r=1&ref=science
3 comments:
Did anyone see Conan O'Brien's rant about the mistake in the NY Times article? Pretty funny.
Originally, the article listed three forms of boron instead of four.
My friend, knowing that I am quite the defensive chemistry major, emailed me the video. Here's the link
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/09/conan-freaks-out-at-the-n_n_165462.html
They posted a note at the end of the article saying that the article was revised after it appeared in the New York edition the previous day and it listed only three forms instead of four.
Correction: February 4, 2009
An article on Tuesday about a newly discovered form of boron misstated the number of pure forms of the element. It is four, including the new one, not three.
The link is the same as the one on my blog.
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