Boron phosphide BP is a hard (Vickers hardness H V  30 GPa ) refractory (melting temperature at ambient pressure is 2840 K ) and low-compressible (300-K bulk modulus is 174 GPa ) wide bandgap (E g = 2.1 eV ) semiconductor with outstanding chemical and high-temperature stability that makes it a promising material for a wide range of applications . Under ambient conditions, BP crystallizes in cubic sphalerite (F-43m) structure with boron and phosphorus tetrahedrally coordinated to each other. Another tetrahedral structure of boron phosphide, hexagonal wurtzite (P6 3 mc) polymorph, has also been reported , however, in the literature there is no data on the structure and properties of this phase.