Microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) was used to diffuse boron into tantalum using plasma initiated from a feedgas mixture containing hydrogen and diborane. The role of substrate temperature and substrate bias in influencing surface chemical structure and hardness was investigated. X-ray diffraction shows that increased temperature results in increased TaB2 formation (relative to TaB) along with increased strain in the tantalum body-centered cubic lattice. Once the strained tantalum becomes locally supersaturated with boron, TaB and TaB2 precipitate. Additional boron remains in a solid solution within the tantalum. The combination of precipitation and solid solution hardening along with boron-induced lattice strain may help explain the 40 GPa average hardness measured by nanoindentation. Application of negative substrate bias did not further increase the hardness, possibly due to etching from increased ion bombardment. These results show that MPCVD is a viable method for synthesis of superhard borides based on plasma-assisted diffusion.

Tungsten oxide (WO3−x) nanomaterials with controlled morphology and composition were fabricated by thermal evaporation of WO3 and S powders at different temperatures in a vacuum tube furnace. At 850 °C the obtained green particle is still of the same monoclinic WO3 phase as that of the starting powder. At a temperature between 900 and 1100 °C, the resultant dark-blue products are particle-like clusters composed of numerous monoclinic WO2.90 short nanorods, but the clusters became looser and the nanorods grew somewhat longer as the temperature increased. At a temperature between 1150 and 1250 °C, elongated and thoroughly separate purple-red monoclinic W18O49 nanorods were obtained. The growth of the prepared WO3−x nanomaterials was controlled by a gas–solid mechanism. Their photocatalytic degradation on organic contaminants was evaluated by decomposing methylene blue (MB) in aqueous phase under sunlight, in which WO3 particles presented higher photocatalytic activity than its oxygen-deficient counterparts, WO2.90 and W18O49. But the W18O49 nanorods had higher adsorption ability to MB in all the samples.