Highly Crumpled Boron Nitride Nanosheets as Adsorbents: Scalable Solvent‐Less Production. Issue 3 (20th January 2015) - Lei, Weiwei
Abstract Boron nitride nanosheets (BNNSs), so‐called "white graphene", have recently received increasing attention, both theoretically and experimentally. Although many synthetic procedures have been proposed for the synthesis of BNNSs, finding a simple, solvent‐less, catalyst‐free, and large‐scale production route is still a challenge. Here, a facile, solvent‐less, low cost, and high yield process is developed, in which mechanical solid‐state exfoliation allows scalable production of crumple BNNSs from commercial BN powders with a high surface area. Importantly, these BNNSs show unprecedentedly high adsorption of proteins described by various adsorption isotherms and kinetics models. In addition, the saturated BNNSs exhibit excellent recyclability, and maintain a high sorption capacity even after five cycles through simply regeneration process of heating in air. This easy recyclability route further demonstrates the great potential of BNNSs for water cleaning application.