文摘
Developing advanced adsorbent materials for effective removal of dyes from water is of critical importance for environmental and water source protection. Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) whiskers were synthesized at low temperature, i.e. 1173 K in nitrogen/hydrogen (5% hydrogen) via polymeric precursor method. The obtained h-BN whiskers possessing high surface area of 964.4 m2/g exhibit good adsorption performance for rhodamine-B (RhB) and methyl blue (MB) with the maximum adsorption capacities reaching 210.1 mg/g and 13973.0 mg/g, respectively. They also exhibit valuable adsorption performance for sulfamethoxazole (SMX) with an adsorption rate of 33% at room temperature. The saturated material could be regenerated by simply heating in air and still maintain a high removal rate of >80% even after 10 cycles. From thermodynamic viewpoint, the adsorption process of RhB on BN whiskers is physisorption, exothermic and spontaneous. In addition, high density defects, micro/mesopore in the structure and the noncovalent interaction such as π–π stacking interaction between lamellar BN whiskers and aromatic rings also give an important contribution to the adsorption capacity.