Chemical engineers first to functionalize boron nitride with other nanosystems

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered a route to alter boron nitride, a layered 2-D material, so that it can bind to other materials, like those found in electronics, biosensors and airplanes, for example. Being able to better-incorporate boron nitride into these components could help dramatically improve their performance.

The scientific community has long been interested in boron nitride because of its unique properties —it is strong, ultrathin, transparent, insulating, lightweight and thermally conductive—which, in theory, makes it a perfect material for use by engineers in a wide variety of applications. However, boron nitride's natural resistance to chemicals and lack of surface-level molecular binding sites have made it difficult for the material to interface with other materials used in these applications.

UIC's Vikas Berry and his colleagues are the first to report that treatment with a superacid causes boron nitride layers to separate into atomically thick sheets, while creating binding sites on the surface of these sheets that provide opportunities to interface with nanoparticles, molecules and other 2-D nanomaterials, like graphene. This includes nanotechnologies that use boron nitride to insulate nano-circuits.

Their findings are published in ACS Nano, a journal of the American Chemical Society.