Influence of Biofield Treatment on Physical, Structural and Spectral Properties of Boron Nitride

What is it about?

Boron nitride (BN) is known for high hardness, thermal stability, thermal conductivity, and catalytic action. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of biofield treatment on physical, structural and spectral properties of BN powder. The control and treated sample of BN powder were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), surface area analysis and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). XRD results indicated that biofield treatment had substantially changed the crystallinity of BN powder as compared to control. Apart from the crystallinity, significant changes were also observed in lattice parameter, density and molecular weight of the treated BN powder as compared to control sample. The XRD data confirmed 33.30% increase crystallite size in treated BN powder as compared to control. The surface area data showed 10.33% increment in surface area of treated BN as compared to control. Furthermore, FT-IR spectra revealed that some part of BN may be transformed from hexagonal BN (h-BN) to rhombohedral boron nitride (r-BN), which was corroborated by emergence of new prominent peaks at 1388 cm-1 in treated BN as compared to control sample. These findings suggest that biofield treatment has substantially altered the structural properties and surface area of treated BN powder.

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Why is it important?

Boron nitride (BN) is a well-known ceramic material with fascinating properties, such as low density, high melting point, strength, corrosion resistance, and good chemical stability, excellent electrical and thermal properties. These properties make boron nitride a promising material for a wide range of industrial applications, especially for its uses under extreme high temperature conditions [1-3]. The BN originally exists in several crystal structures such as wurtzite BN (w-BN), cubic BN (c-BN), rhombohedral BN (r-BN), hexagonal BN (h-BN), explosive BN (e-BN), and turbostratic BN (t-BN). The c-BN and w-BN are especially known for super-hardness, wide band gap and its oxidation resistance which makes them a promising material for fabrication of cutting tools, protective coatings, and optoelectronic devices [4,5]. Nevertheless, the h-BN has similar crystal structure to graphite hence it is also known as white graphite [6,7]. This crystal structure provides the outstanding lubricating properties, high thermal conductivity, electrical resistance and low dielectric constant [4,8,9]. Recently, BN is synthesized with various morphologies, such as hollow spheres [10], porous structures [11], and one-dimensional nanostructures to obtained excellent properties [12,13]. The porous BN has gain significant attention due to its high specific surface area, which makes it a promising material for catalytic action. The porous BN has been synthesized by using various methods such as molecular precursors, and supercritical drying method etc [14-17]. However, all these methods require either special precursor or high temperature conditions to modulate the specific surface area and crystal structure. In physics, the energy is considered as the ability to do work; which fundamentally interrelates with matter as E=mc2 (Einstein’s famous equation). However the energy can be considered as a field of force which effectively interacts with any matter at a distance and cause action. Researchers have confirmed that biomagnetic fields are present around human body, which have been evidenced by electromyography (EMG), electrocardiography (ECG) and electroencephalogram (EEG) [18]. Scientists have postulated that it is due to the flow of bioelectricity (generated from heart, brain functions or due to the motion of charged particles such as protons, electrons, and ions) in the human body. As per the basic fundamental law in physics, when an electrical signal passes through any material, a magnetic field is generated in the surrounding space. Hence, a magnetic field is created along with the bioelectricity in human body, known as biomagnetic field. The cumulative field created by bioelectricity and biomagnetic field, which surrounding the human body is known as biofield. The energy associated with this field is considered as biofield energy. Mr. Mahendra K Trivedi’s biofield has known to alter the characteristics in various things at atomic, molecular and physical level in many fields such as material science [19-26], microbiology [27-29], biotechnology [30,31] and agriculture [32-34]. The biofield treatment has also shown significant results in graphite carbon, for instance, the unit cell volume was decrease by 1% and crystallite size was increased by 100% after treatment [20]. In the present study, we report for the first time, an impact of biofield treatment on BN powder for its structural properties along with atomic and physical properties.

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