New boron minerals named after Chinese scientists are as strong as diamonds

The International Mineralogy Association formally recognized this week a new mineral, cubic boron nitride, which was discovered by the international team of geologists from the United States, China, and Germany in nature in 2009 and was named Qingsongite. Prior to this, the minerals could only be synthesized in the laboratory.

As early as 1957, U.S. researchers used artificial methods to synthesize cubic boron nitride for the first time under high temperature and pressure conditions, but natural cubic boron nitride has not been discovered. Until 2009, scientists from the University of California, Riverside, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and their counterparts from Chinese and German scientific research institutes together with the ancient oceanic crust about 306 kilometers underground in the mountains of the southern Tibetan Plateau in China. The mineral was found in chrome rock, which crystallized under high pressure conditions of approximately 1300 degrees Celsius and 118,430 atmospheres.

The team named the new mineral qingsongite (the suffix ite stands for salt) under the name of Fang Qingsong, a professor at the Geological Institute of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. Fang Qingsong first discovered diamonds in Tibet’s chrome-rich rocks in the 1970s, and he also contributed to the discovery of four new minerals.

“The uniqueness of qingsongite is that it is the first type of boron mineral that was found to be formed under extreme conditions in the depths of the earth.” said geologist Larissa of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, who participated in the study. Dubsenskaya said: "All other known boron minerals are found on the surface of the earth."

Cubic boron nitride is an important technical material. Its atomic structure is similar to the structure of carbon atoms in diamond, so it has high density characteristics, hardness comparable to diamonds, and is often used as an abrasive and tool material.

The International Mineralogy Association receives at least 100 applications for approval of new minerals and their names each year. To date, more than 4,700 minerals have been confirmed.

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