Photochemical Synthesis of Ultrafine Cubic Boron Nitride Nanoparticles under Ambient Conditions

Hui Liu; Peng Jin; Yan-Ming Xue; Cunku Dong; Xiang Li; Cheng-Chun Tang; Xi-Wen Du

doi:10.1002/anie.201502023

Photochemical Synthesis of Ultrafine Cubic Boron Nitride Nanoparticles under Ambient Conditions

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2015 Jun 8;54(24):7051-4. doi: 10.1002/anie.201502023. Epub 2015 Apr 29.

Authors

Hui Liu^{1

2}, Peng Jin¹, Yan-Ming Xue¹, Cunku Dong², Xiang Li², Cheng-Chun Tang¹, Xi-Wen Du³

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Micro- and Nano-scale Boron Nitride Materials of Hebei Province, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin (China).
² Institute of New-Energy Materials, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Composite and Functional Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, No. 92 Weijin Road, Nankai District, Tianjin 300072 (China).
³ Institute of New-Energy Materials, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Composite and Functional Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, No. 92 Weijin Road, Nankai District, Tianjin 300072 (China). xwdu@tju.edu.cn.

PMID: 25924717
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201502023

Abstract

Cubic boron nitride (c-BN) is a super-hard material whose hardness increases dramatically with decreasing size. However, c-BN nanoparticles (NPs) with sizes less than 10 nm have never been obtained. Herein we report a simple strategy towards the synthesis of ultrafine c-BN NPs with an average size of 3.5 nm. The method, under ambient conditions, exploits a laser-induced photochemical effect and employs dioxane solution of ammonia borane (AB) as a liquid target. Meanwhile, total dehydrogenation of AB is realized by laser irradiation. Therefore, this approach shows great potential for the preparation of super-hard NPs as well as controllable dehydrogenation.

Keywords: ammonia borane; cubic boron nitride; dehydrogenation; laser irradiation; nanoparticles.