High-pressure structural phase transitions in TiO2 and synthesis of the hardest known oxide

Despite great technological importance and many investigations, a material with a measured hardness comparable to that of diamond or cubic boron nitride has yet to be identified. Our combined theoretical and experimental investigations led to the discovery of a new polymorph of titanium dioxide, where titanium is ninefold coordinated to oxygen in the cotunnite (PbCl2) structure. Hardness measurements on this phase, synthesized at pressures above 60 GPa and temperatures above 1000 K, reveal that this material is the hardest oxide yet discovered. Furthermore, it is one of the least compressible (with a measured bulk modulus of 431 GPa) and hardest (with a microhardness of 38 GPa) polycrystalline materials studied so far.