Boron is an element of fascinating chemical complexity. Controversies have shrouded this element since its discovery was announced in 1808: the new element turned out to be a compound containing less than 60-70 percent of boron, and it was not until
1909 that 99-percent pure boron was obtained. And although we now know of at least 16 polymorphs, the stable phase of boron is not yet experimentally established even at ambient conditions. Borons complexities arise from frustration: situated between metals and insulators in the periodic table, boron has only three valence electrons, which would favour metallicity, but they are sufficiently localized that insulating states emerge. However, this subtle balance between metallic and insulating states is easily shifted by pressure, temperature and impurities. Here we report the results of high-pressure experiments and ab initio evolutionary crystal structure predictions that explore the structural stability of boron under pressure and, strikingly, reveal a partially ionic high-pressure boron phase. This new phase is stable between 19 and 89 GPa, can be quenched to ambient conditions, and has a hitherto unknown structure (space group Pnnm, 28 atoms in the unit cell) consisting of icosahedral B12 clusters and B2 pairs in a NaCl-type arrangement. We find that the ionicity of the phase affects its electronic bandgap, infrared adsorption and dielectric constants, and that it arises from the different electronic properties of the B2 pairs and B12 clusters and the resultant charge transfer between them.
Collecting the complete data set of previous experiments on periclase, covering a pressure and temperature range of 0-141.8 GPa and 100-3031 K respectively, the first comprehensive P-V-T description of MgO is presented comprising all previous experim
ents. The P-V-T EoS of Birch-Murnaghan, Rydberg-Vinet and Garai are determined by unrestricted fitting. The three EoSs are consistent and a unique set of parameters is able to cover the entire pressure and temperature range. The RMS misfits for the pressure are 0.371 GPa, 0.381 GPa and 0.396 GPa for the Garai, Birch-Murnaghan and Rydberg-Vinet EoSs. The RMS misfits for the volume and the temperature are 0.018 cm3 and 60.3 K for the EoS of Garai.
The comment of Dubrovinskaia et al. is scientifically flawed. The high-pressure form of boron, discovered by Oganov et al., is indeed new and its bonding has a significant ionic character, as demonstrated in Ref. 1.
Pressure-melting temperature relationship is proposed and tested against the experiments of metals (Pt and Al), salt (NaCl), and ceramic (MgO) with positive results. The equation contains one open parameter which remains constant for the investigated
substances. The constant value of the parameter indicates that the presented equation for the melting curve might be the first one which does not contain any arbitrary constant which is left open to fit to the experiments.
