Hexagon boron nitride (BN) has evolved into a quite competitive building block in electrical and electronic fields. However, exfoliation and functionalization of BN nanosheets (BNNSs) confront a formidable challenge. Herein, an effective and green saccharide-assisted mechanochemical approach was proposed to exfoliate and synchronously functionalize BNNSs. The production yield of BNNSs exhibited a notable enhancement by incorporating saccharides, where the highest yield was up to ∼29.4% with the assistance of glucose. The saccharides enhanced the applied force of ball milling to promote BN delamination. The exfoliated cost is much lower for our proposed approach than for the previously reported exfoliation methods. The theoretical first-principle calculation and experimental results confirmed that the obtained BNNSs (saccharide-g-BNNSs) remained intact and were covalently grafted with saccharides in different degrees. Benefitting from the outstanding comprehensive properties of saccharide-g-BNNSs, their gelatin composite films exhibited multifunctional performance, such as high/anisotropic thermal conductivity, shielding deep blue to the UV light, and flame retardance. Our work paves a promising way to greenly prepare few-layered and functionalized BNNSs and to expedite their applications.

Surface modification was conducted on the basic magnesium sulfate whiskers (MSW) using sodium stearate. The modification performance was evaluated by comparing the activation index, oil absorption value, rest angle, and dispersibility in polypropylene (PP) resin prior to and after treatment. It was found that the surface properties of the whiskers were improved by sodium stearate modification. In particular, the improvement in the dispersibility in PP was significant. Surface characterization was conducted using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric-differential scanning calorimetry (TG-DSC) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) for the raw and modified whiskers. The results indicated the co-existence of both chemical and physical adsorptions of sodium stearate on the surfaces of MSW.