Porous boron nitride nanosheets for effective water cleaning

Lei, Weiwei; Portehault, David; Liú, Dan; Qin, Si; Chen, Ying

doi:10.1038/ncomms2818

Cited by 922 publications

(674 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Indeed, surface/interface engineering with metal ions are encouraged since BCN-based materials feature the "lop-sided" densities characteristic of ionic B-N bonding, and the polyelectronic nitride can transfer more electron density to metal ions [36,37]. They are thus effective for the adsorption of metal ions, chemically, as highlighted here by surface engineering via cobalt ions (Scheme 1).…”

Section: Science China Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photocatalytic water oxidation by layered Co/h-BCN hybrids

et al. 2015

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The search for new materials has progressed from metal-based photocatalysts to elemental semiconductors (C, Si, P, S, B) [11][12][13][14][15] and recently to metal-free binary materials and polymers, such as carbon nitride [16], boron carbide [17] and conjugated semiconductors [18][19][20]. These researches indicate that photon absorbing materials can be constituted by using lightweight elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and boron, opening up new opportunities for the selection of innovative and intriguing materials for artificial photosynthesis. It is of particular interest that some of these elements themselves (graphene [21], silicone [22]) or their combinations (h-BN, g-C 3 N 4 ) [23] can form layered structures with reduced thickness comparable to charge-diffusion distance, and thus if a semiconducting electronic structure was imparted in these materials, the fast separation of light-induced charge carrier would significantly benefit surface photoredox process that relied on the excitation and separation of electron-hole pairs and their subsequent participation in surface chemical reactions [24][25][26]. An interesting case of such a layered material is ternary h-BCN with tuneable ba nd gap energies between graphene (zero bandgap) and h-BN (bandgap = 5.6 eV) [27], which have the same atomic structure and share many similar properties. The hybridized phases of the two two-dimensional (2D) materials by atomic mixture of B, N, and C with broad composition ranges to create various layered semiconducting structures would produce new material functions complementary to graphene and h-BN, enabling a wide variety of electronic structures, applications and properties [28][29][30]. Such an emerging family of chemically inert and mechanically strong 2D materials practically allows the bandgap-engineered applications in heterogeneous photocatalysis by creating a medium-gap ternary semiconductor, in which the band gap, redox energy levels, p/n-type properties and surface acid-base chemistry can in principle be modulated by rational design and synthesis [31,32].A hexagonal boron carbon nitride (h-BCN) semiconductor was applied to intercalate cobalt ions to catalyze oxygen evolution reaction (OER) with light illumination, without using noble metals. The h-BCN with high specific surface area showed a strong chemical affinity towards metal ions due to the "lop-sided" densities characteristic of ionic B-N bonding, enabling the creation of metal/h-BCN hybrid layered structures with unique properties. As exemplified here by Co/h-BCN for water oxidation catalysis, after intercalating cobalt ions in the h-BCN host, the photocatalytic activity of the resultant layered hybrid is optimized due to their synergic catalysis that promotes charge separation and lowers reaction barriers. This finding promises a new nobel-metal-free nanocompsite using cost-acceptable and earth-abundant sust ances for photocatalytic OER, and enables the facile design of duel catalytic cascades by merging transition metal catalysis with h-BCN (photo)catalys...

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Section: Science China Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photocatalytic water oxidation by layered Co/h-BCN hybrids

et al. 2015

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“…3,4 Thus far, various porous sorbents, such as resins, gels, carbon-based sponges/ solids and diverse polymeric materials, have been explored. [5][6][7][8] Previous studies have excessively focused on the oil sorption capacity, and the spilled oil has been recovered mainly via distillation and squeezing, [9][10][11][12] which are time-consuming, tedious and energydemanding and are thus seriously restricted in their practical application.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coating sponge with a hydrophobic porous coordination polymer containing a low-energy CF3-decorated surface for continuous pumping recovery of an oil spill from water

et al. 2016

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For the remediation of oil spills and organic solvent leakage into water, it is desirable to develop not only advanced sorbents with a high adsorption capability but also labor-and time-saving apparatuses that can work continuously without human intervention. In this work, we synthesized a novel and highly stable porous coordination polymer (PCP, also called metal-organic framework), University of Science and Technology of China-6 (USTC-6), with a corrugated -CF 3 surface that features high hydrophobicity. The uniform growth of USTC-6 throughout a graphene oxide (GO)-modified sponge was achieved and yielded a macroscopic USTC-6@GO@sponge sorbent, which repels water and exhibits a superior adsorption capacity for diverse oils and organic solvents. Remarkably, the sorbent can be further assembled with tubes and a self-priming pump to build a model apparatus that affords consecutive and efficient oil recovery from water. The easy and fast recovery of oils/organic solvents from water based on such an apparatus indicates that it has great potential for future water purification and treatment.

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“…To more quantitatively evaluate the adsorption capacity of 3D WG foams, several recently reported excellent sorbents and commercial activated carbon powders were adopted for comparison, as shown in Figure 5c. Taking the adsorption of pump oil as an example, the adsorption capacity (115 g g − 1 ) of the 3D WG foams was higher than all of these competitors, including BN porous nanosheets (27 g g − 1 ), 36 graphene aerogels (30 g g − 1 ), 14 graphene sponges (68.5 g g − 1 ) 8 and graphene oxide-polyurethane sponges (100 g g − 1 ) 16 (see Supplementary Table S1). Compared with commercial BN and active carbon powders, the adsorption capacity Recyclability, the important characteristic of sorbents, was tested for these 3D WG foams, as shown in Figure 5d and e. After 7 test cycles and heat treatments at 100°C, the adsorption capacities of the 3D WG foams still remained 490% toward both chloroform and ethanol.…”

Section: D White Graphene Foam Scavengers H Zhao Et Almentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These 3D WG foams exhibited the highest adsorption capacity to dyes that was much higher than previously reported values, as shown in Figure 4d, when compared with similar sorbents, including BN ultrathin hollow spheres (116.5 mg g − 1 ), 33 BN ultrathin fibrous nanonets (219.6 mg g − 1 ), 34 BN nanocarpets (272.4 mg g − 1 ) 35 and BN porous nanosheets (313 mg g − 1 ). 36 In addition to typical dyes, various organics and oils are more common daily and industrial pollutants. Surprisingly, these 3D WG foams exhibited much higher adsorption capacities to these organics and oils compared with many competitors, as shown in Figure 5.…”

Section: D White Graphene Foam Scavengers H Zhao Et Almentioning

confidence: 99%

3D white graphene foam scavengers: vesicant-assisted foaming boosts the gram-level yield and forms hierarchical pores for superstrong pollutant removal applications

2015

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Three-dimensional (3D) nanostructures assembled with one-or few-layered ultrathin two-dimensional (2D) crystals have triggered great interest in energy and environmental applications. Here, we introduce a gas-foaming process in an hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) ceramic material to fabricate 3D white graphene (WG) foams without using any catalysts or templates for superstrong pollutant removal applications. Importantly, the introduction of vesicants guaranteed the reproducibility and yield (4500 cm 3 ). Interestingly, these 3D WG foams possessed a vesicular structure with hierarchical pores ranging from nm to μm scales and with ultrathin walls consisting of mono-or few-layered BN membranes with planar sizes as large as 100 μm. Consequently, such microstructure merits of hierarchical pores and ultrathin walls endowed them not only very low density (2.1 mg cm − 3 ) but also superstrong adsorption ability, illustrated by capacitances up to 190 times its own weight toward a wide range of environment contaminations, including various oils and dyes. Thus, the 3D h-BN WG foams prepared by vesicant-assisted foaming should have great potential as outstanding environmental scavengers. NPG Asia Materials (2015) 7, e168; doi:10.1038/am.2015.8; published online 27 March 2015 INTRODUCTION Two-dimensional (2D) crystals, such as graphene 1 and white graphene (WG, mono-or few-layered hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN)), 2,3 have triggered great interest because of their extraordinary intrinsic properties and wide range of applications in electronics, optoelectronics, energy storage and the environment. 4 However, for some specific applications, such as the adsorption of various contaminants and as electrodes in electrochemical cells, their pristine flat 2D structures have been recognized to not fully match the practical requirements. [5][6][7][8] In contrast, three-dimensional (3D) architectures using 2D crystals as building blocks can simultaneously provide the virtues of 2D and 3D structures, such as ultrathin sheets and large specific surface areas from 2D sheets 6 and hierarchical pores and ultralight densities from 3D configurations. 7 Recently, such novel 2D-3D structure features have been proven to exhibit new and outstanding performances. For instance, graphenecarbon nanotube 3D structures had densities as low as 0.16 mg cm − 3 , even lighter than air (1.29 mg cm − 3 ); 9 3D graphene and BN networks exhibited excellent mechanical properties; 10,11 3D BNC hybrid networks showed tunable electronic and thermal properties. 12 However, the high-yield fabrication of such 3D architectures of 2D crystals, especially without using any templates or catalysts, remains a great challenge. Currently, there are two methods for fabricating 3D

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Porous boron nitride nanosheets for effective water cleaning

Cited by 922 publications

References 37 publications

Photocatalytic water oxidation by layered Co/h-BCN hybrids

Photocatalytic water oxidation by layered Co/h-BCN hybrids

Coating sponge with a hydrophobic porous coordination polymer containing a low-energy CF3-decorated surface for continuous pumping recovery of an oil spill from water

3D white graphene foam scavengers: vesicant-assisted foaming boosts the gram-level yield and forms hierarchical pores for superstrong pollutant removal applications

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