Cheap, gram-scale fabrication of BN nanosheets via substitution reaction of graphite powders and their use for mechanical reinforcement of polymers

As one of the most important two-dimensional (2D) materials, BN nanosheets attracted intensive interest in the past decade. Although there are many methods suitable for the preparation of BN sheets, finding a cheap and nontoxic way for their mass and high-quality production is still a challenge. Her...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2014-02, Vol.4 (1), p.4211-4211, Article 4211
Main Authors: Liu, Fei, Mo, Xiaoshu, Gan, Haibo, Guo, Tongyi, Wang, Xuebin, Chen, Bin, Chen, Jun, Deng, Shaozhi, Xu, Ningsheng, Sekiguchi, Takashi, Golberg, Dmitri, Bando, Yoshio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Graphite
Mechanical properties
Polymers
Polymethylmethacrylate
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Summary:As one of the most important two-dimensional (2D) materials, BN nanosheets attracted intensive interest in the past decade. Although there are many methods suitable for the preparation of BN sheets, finding a cheap and nontoxic way for their mass and high-quality production is still a challenge. Here we provide a highly effective and cheap way to synthesize gram-scale-level well-structured BN nanosheets from many common graphite products as source materials. Single-crystalline multi-layered BN sheets have a mean lateral size of several hundred nanometers and a thickness ranging from 5 nm to 40 nm. Cathodoluminescence (CL) analysis shows that the structures exhibit a near band-edge emission and a broad emission band from 300 nm to 500 nm. Utilization of nanosheets for the reinforcement of polymers revealed that the Young's modulus of BN/PMMA composite had increased to 1.56 GPa when the BN's fraction was only 2 wt.%, thus demonstrating a 20% gain compared to a blank PMMA film. It suggests that the BN nanosheet is an ideal mechanical reinforcing material for polymers. In addition, this easy and nontoxic substitution method may provide a universal route towards high yields of other 2D materials.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep04211