Facile, clean and rapid exfoliation of boron-nitride using a non-thermal plasma process

Abstract

Non-Thermal Plasma source was used in this work to exfoliated boron-nitride (BN) powders. The generation of hexagonal BN nanosheets (h-BNNSs) few-layered was observed by TEM. The hBN exfoliation occurred along their transverse axis, preserving the hexagonal structure. The micrographs showed ordered lattice fringes with d-spacing of approximately 0.33 nm indicating the increase of (0 0 2) h-BNNSs crystal lattice planes, also confirmed by the relative peak intensity decrease in relation to the other peaks in XRD measures. The few amounts of layers were confirmed by intensity decrease, enlargement, and blue shift of E2 g vibrational mode in Raman spectra. Moreover, the appearance of the FTIR band corresponding to the hydroxyl group occurs due to large amounts of defects such as vacancy defects.