Novel BN mesoporous nanowire materials with doped oxygen atoms have been controlled and prepared successfully. Multiple techniques have been employed to determine the structure, morphology, surface feature, defects, and electronic structure. It was the first time that a controlled preparation of this unique structure was applied to adsorptive desulfurization. The obtained BN mesoporous nanowires displayed outstanding adsorptive desulfurization activity for DBT (65.4 mg S g −1 adsorbent according to the Langmuir isotherm model), which was much higher than that of commercial BN and graphene-like BN. At the same time, the BN mesoporous nanowires displayed good stability and excellent adsorption performance for the 4,6-DMDBT (33.2 mg S g −1 adsorbent). The significant enhancement of adsorption desulfurization performance of BN mesoporous nanowires was ascribed to the large number of low coordinated atoms along the nanowire surface and mesopores, which could cause an interaction with DBT, and the doped oxygen atoms further strengthen the interaction.

The chemical hardness of adsorbents is an important physicochemical property in the process of adsorption based on the hard and soft acids and bases (HSAB) theory. Tuning chemical hardness of adsorbents modulated by their concomitants is a promising approach to enhance the adsorptive capacity in principle. In the present work, we report an efficient strategy that the adsorption capacity for aromatic sulfocompounds can be enhanced by tuning the chemical hardness. This strategy is first theoretically explored by introducing C element into the network of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) based on a series of model materials (model_ x C, x = 1–5). Computational results show that the chemical hardness is reduced after gradually C-doping, which may lead to an enhancement of adsorption capacity according to the HSAB theory. Then, a series of C-doped h-BN materials (BCN- x , x = 10–50) were controlled synthesized. All of the as-prepared materials show better adsorption capacities (e.g., 27.43 mg g –1 for BCN-50) than pure h-BN. Experiment results show that the adsorption capacity correlates well with the C content in the BCN- x , which is consistent with the results predicted by theoretical calculation. This strategy may be helpful to rationally design highly efficient adsorbents in separation engineering and may be expanded to similar two-dimensional materials, where the π–π interaction is the dominant driven force.

No abstract

Ribbon-like structured BN was prepared with exposed abundant sharp edges and a surface porous structure. The obtained BN displayed the highest adsorption desulfurization capacities reported so far.

In this work, a series of MoxCo1-xP2/MWCNTs (x = 0.25, 0.29 and 0.33) composite electrocatalysts have been designed and successfully fabricated, and their utility as remarkable active and stable electrocatalysts...