After the discovery of C fullerenes and C nanotubes grown in the vapor phase, the formation of carbon onions [1] in the condensed phase from the irradiation of graphitic polyhedral particles with an intense electron beam gave further evidence that spherical carbon network can be favored under high temperature and strong irradiation regimes. Recently, BN and B-C-N hybrid nanotubes were synthetized. In spite of theoretical predictions, so far there has been no experimental evidence for the stability of B-N and B-C-N analogs of buckminster fullerenes. We exposed turbostratic BC2N and turbostratic BN samples to intense electron irradiation to study the ability of the honey comb network to include non hexagonal member rings and form curved structures.

In the experiments described here, the BC2N starting materials were synthesized from vapor phase reaction (CVD) of BC13 and CH3CN. Such samples were then exposed to high temperature-high pressure (HT-HP) conditions at 7.7.