 Natural Abundance
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| Turkey and the United States are the world's largest producers of boron. Turkey has almost 63% of the world's boron potential and boron reserves. Boron does not appear in nature in elemental form but is
found combined in borax, boric acid, colemanite, kernite, ulexite and borates. Boric acid is sometimes found in volcanic spring
waters. Ulexite is a borate mineral that naturally has properties of fiber optics.
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| Economically important sources are from the ore rasorite (kernite) and tincal (borax ore) which are both found in the Mojave
Desert of California, with borax being the most important source there. The largest borax deposits are found in Central and
Western Turkey including the provinces of Eskisehir, Kutahya and Balikesir.
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| Even a boron-containing natural antibiotic, boromycin, isolated from streptomyces, is known. |
| Pure elemental boron is not easy to prepare. The earliest methods used involve reduction of boric oxide with metals such as
magnesium or aluminium. However the product is almost always contaminated with metal borides. (The reaction is quite spectacular though). Pure boron
can be prepared by reducing volatile boron halogenides with hydrogen at high temperatures. The highly pure boron, for the use in semiconductor industry, is produced by the decomposition of diborane
at high temperatures and then further purified with the Czochralski process.
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