Chem. Mater. 2004, 16, 5445-5451
5445
New Ways to High-Quality Bulk Scandium Nitride Rainer Niewa,* Dmitry A. Zherebtsov, Martin Kirchner, Marcus Schmidt, and Walter Schnelle Max-Planck-Institut fu¨ r Chemische Physik fester Stoffe, No¨ thnitzer Strasse 40, 01187 Dresden, Germany Received August 12, 2004. Revised Manuscript Received September 23, 2004
ScN was prepared in three different ways leading to single phase samples with low oxygen content in a broad range of particle sizes. Synthesis from the elements provides, in an exothermic reaction, brownish transparent single crystals (rock-salt structure type, space group Fm3 h m, a ) 451.2(1) pm, Z ) 4, Rint ) 0.034, R1 ) 0.013, wR2 ) 0.018). From a decomposition reaction of Li3[ScN2] fine brown powders (particle size ≈ 1 µm) were obtained. Via nitridation of intermetallic Sc-In phases even nanoscaled (