Synthesis of hexagonal boron nitride fibers within two hour annealing at 500 °C and two hour growth duration at 1000 °C

Abstract

Several advantageous features like low density, large surface area, high porosity and tight pore size make the nanofiber suitable for a wide range of applications from medical to consumer products and industrial to high-tech applications. Present study concerns the synthesis of hexagonal boron nitride fibers (Ø=70–350nm) from a mixture of Boron, Magnesium oxide and Iron oxide powders via a simple CVD technique. A relatively long annealing and growth duration of two hours at 500°C and 1000°C, respectively were utilized in this synthesis. The synthesized samples seem to have the BNFs of irregular curved human hair-like morphologies in lower resolution and solid cylinder-like structures in high resolution transmission electron microscopy. The presence of Boron and Nitrogen in the synthesized BNF's sample were confirmed via the B 1s peak at 190.7eV and N 1s peak at 398.3eV in the XPS survey whereas a major peak at 1370 (cm−1) in the Raman spectrum corresponds to the vibration of E2g mode in h-BN. The sharp peaks in the XRD pattern verify the h-BN phase and highly crystalline nature of the synthesized BNFs.