Study of one-step pyrolysis porous boron nitride with large specific surface area

Abstract Porous boron nitride (p-BN) is gaining an enormous attention due to its application in gas absorption, photocatalysis, and drug delivery. However, complicated preparation steps and low specific surface area have been restricting its application. Detailed morphology and structure change and mechanism of pyrolysis process have never been discussed before. Therefore, the facile one-step pyrolysis method was introduced to fabricate the p-BN with high specific surface area. The results demonstrated that the as-synthesized samples with high purity was prepared at 1500 °C. Unpredictable outcome suggested that the pyrolysis temperature instead of precursor ratio has remarkable effects on samples. The structure changed from amorphous form into hexagonal layer and the morphology transformed from granular into flake when temperature varied from 1000 °C to 1500 °C. Its specific surface area and total pore volume reached to 1138.4 m2 g−1 and 0.7287 cm3 g−1, respectively. Explicit mechanism was investigated as well. And an intriguing phenomenon showed that the mass loss of as-prepared p-BN partly recovered at high temperature, which enclosed its unique thermal stability. Implications of the results suggest that this work proposed a facile route to prepare p-BN with high specific surface area.