Nitrides of Non‐Main Group Elements

Abstract In the last two decades, there has been a renewed interest in the chemistry of nitrides and nitridometalates. Both binary and higher nitrides MxNy have already featured prominently as refractory materials, corrosion‐ and mechanical wear‐resistant coatings, hard materials, and hard magnets; thin films are used as diffusion barriers in integrated circuits. Whereas research on binary transition metal nitrides is mostly driven by technical and economic interests, the investigation on nitridometalates primarily focuses on exploration with respect to the development of new synthetic strategies and the design of new materials. Within this field of interest, especially the nitride chemistry of rare earth metals is still comparably undeveloped. Chemical bonding in binary nitrides varies from primarily salt‐like via covalent to metallic, whereas nitridometalates are best described as containing covalent complex anions [MxNy]z− with alkali, alkaline earth, or rare earth metal cations providing electroneutrality