What is "nitridoborate"

The nitridoborates are chemical compounds of boron and nitrogen with metals. These compounds are typically produced at high temperature by reacting hexagonal boron nitride (α -BN) with metal nitrides or by metathesis reactions involving nitridoborates. A wide range of these compounds have been made involving lithium, alkaline earth metals and lanthanides, and their structures determined using crystallographic techiques such as X-ray crystallography. Structurally one of their interesting features is the presence of polyatomic anions of boron and nitrogen where the geometry and the B-N bond length have been interpreted in terms of π-bonding. Many of the compounds produced can be described as ternary compounds of metal boron and nitrogen and examples of these are LiBN, MgBN, LaBN, LaBN. However there are examples of compounds with more than one metal, for example LaNiBN and compounds containing anions such as Cl, for example MgBNCl.