Low-temperature collapsing boron nitride nanospheres into nanoflakes and their photoluminescence properties

Flake-like boron nitride (BN) nanocrystals with a uniform diameter of ~200 nm and thickness of ~20 nm were fabricated by directly transforming from BN nanospheres with the assistance of NaCl salt at 1300 °C. The transformation from nanospheres to nano-pies and further to nanoflakes was achieved in a simple procedure of Na or Cl ions intercalation/deintercalation procedure at such low temperature. The morphologies of the spherical precursor and resulting nanoflakes were almost identical. X-ray powder diffractions revealed that the BN nanoflakes (BNfs) were well crystallized in the hexagonal structure via graphitizing index calculation. Elemental content analysis, FTIR spectra and TEM images were also used to characterize the products. Strong ultraviolet (UV) emissions were detected by photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopic analysis, in which the emission regions could be facilely tuned by controlling the reaction temperature. Detailed studies indicated that the collapsing temperature of unstable BN nanospheres into nanoflakes was strongly dependent on the introduction of NaCl molten salts or not. We believe the use of the NaCl molten salt medium may enhance the kinetics of the crystallization and also purification. The green fabrication characteristics, such as using NaCl salt as the additive, energy saving (300 °C lower than the commercial process), non-toxicity of byproduct and easy scale-up, make the present novel synthetic route likely to be of interest to commercial-scale production of BN nanoflakes.