Boron has long intrigued scientists. Its atoms are amenable to many bonding modes, and pure boron can be found in a variety of phases — some clear; some opaque; most poorly conducting; all, so far, superhard.
Now, researchers have prepared a new, and potentially useful, phase that is deformable and has an electrical conductivity more than one million times that of typical boron materials. The structure, called Imma-B60, is reported today in Nature Chemistry1.
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