Boron Nitride Nanomaterials: Properties, Fabrication, and Applications

Boron nitride was first produced in the 18th century and, by virtue of its extraordinary mechanical strength, has found extensive application in industrial processes since the 1940s. However, the more recent discovery that boron nitride allotropes are as structurally diverse as those of carbon (e.g. fullerenes, graphene, carbon nanotubes) has placed this material, and particularly its low-dimensional allotropes, back at the forefront of modern material science.

This book provides a comprehensive history of this rapid rise in the status of boron nitride and boron nitride nanomaterials, spanning the earliest examples of three-dimensional boron nitride allotropes, through to contemporary structures such as monolayer hexagonal boron nitride, boron nitride nanomeshes, boron nitride nanotubes and the incorporation of boron nitride into cutting-edge van der Waals heterostructures. It specifically focuses on the properties, applications and synthesis techniques for each of these allotropes and examines how the evolution in boron nitride production methods is linked to that in our understanding of how low-dimensional nanomaterials self-assemble, or ’grow’, during synthesis. The book demonstrates the key synergy between growth mechanisms and the development of new, advanced nanostructured materials.

Ben McLean is a senior researcher at the Institute for Basic Science within the theory group of the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea, working with Distinguished Professor Feng Ding. He employs quantum chemical molecular dynamics and density functional theory to model the growth of low-dimensional materials including carbon and boron nitride nanotubes, graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides. He received his his PhD in chemistry from the University of Newcastle, Australia, in 2020. Following his PhD, Dr. McLean published three papers using density functional tight binding simulations in collaboration with the experimental work of the world-leading carbon nanotube synthesis group of Prof. Esko Kauppinen at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland.

Alister J. Page is associate professor in Physical and Computational Chemistry at the School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle, Australia. He completed his BMath/BSc degrees in 2005 before pursuing PhD research in 2006 under the supervision of Prof. Ellak I. von Nagy-Felsobuki in the field of fundamental quantum chemistry and spectroscopy. Dr. Page’s research to date has resulted in 2 books, 3 book chapters, more than 110 academic publications and is based on collaborations with researchers in more than 20 countries. He has supervised 17 PhD and MPhil students to completion and 4 postdoctoral researchers.