Nitride

In chemistry, a nitride is a chemical compound of nitrogen. Nitrides can be inorganic or organic, ionic or covalent. The nitride anion, N3- ion, is very elusive but compounds of nitride are numerous, although rarely naturally occurring. Some nitrides have a found applications,[1] such as wear-resistant coatings (e.g., titanium nitride, TiN), hard ceramic materials (e.g., silicon nitride, Si3N4), and semiconductors (e.g., gallium nitride, GaN). The development of GaN-based light emitting diodes was recognized by the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics.[2] Metal nitrido complexes are also common.

Synthesis of inorganic metal nitrides is challenging because nitrogen gas (N2) is not very reactive at low temperatures, but it becomes more reactive at higher temperatures. Therefore, a balance must be achieved between the low reactivity of nitrogen gas at low temperatures and the entropy driven formation of N2 at high temperatures.[3] However, synthetic methods for nitrides are growing more sophisticated and the materials are of increasing technological relevance.[4]

  1. ^ Greenwood, Norman N.; Earnshaw, Alan (1997). Chemistry of the Elements (2nd ed.). Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 978-0-08-037941-8.
  2. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014". The Nobel Prize. Nobel Prize Outreach. Retrieved 13 January 2021.
  3. ^ Sun, Wenhao; Bartel, Christopher J.; Arca, Elisabetta; Bauers, Sage R.; Matthews, Bethany; Orvañanos, Bernardo; Chen, Bor-Rong; Toney, Michael F.; Schelhas, Laura T.; Tumas, William; Tate, Janet; Zakutayev, Andriy; Lany, Stephan; Holder, Aaron M.; Ceder, Gerbrand (2019). "A map of the inorganic ternary metal nitrides". Nature Materials. 18 (7): 732–739. arXiv:1809.09202. doi:10.1038/s41563-019-0396-2. ISSN 1476-4660. PMID 31209391. S2CID 119461695.
  4. ^ Greenaway, Ann L.; Melamed, Celeste L.; Tellekamp, M. Brooks; Woods-Robinson, Rachel; Toberer, Eric S.; Neilson, James R.; Tamboli, Adele C. (2021-07-26). "Ternary Nitride Materials: Fundamentals and Emerging Device Applications". Annual Review of Materials Research. 51 (1): 591–618. arXiv:2010.08058. doi:10.1146/annurev-matsci-080819-012444. ISSN 1531-7331. S2CID 223953608.