Hierarchical porous boron nitride nanosheets with versatile adsorption for water treatment

In this study, hierarchical porous boron nitride nanosheets (hp-BNNSs) were prepared by pyrolyzing the mixture of boron acid and urea at 1000 °C for 5 h. The prepared hp-BNNSs exhibited hierarchical porous structure with the pores in the range of 1.1 nm–40 nm and a higher specific surface area of 1145 m2/g. hp-BNNSs showed versatile adsorption capacity to industrial dyes (methylene blue (MB) and rhodamine B (RhB)), heavy metal ions (Cu2+ and Ni2+), and antibiotic (tetracycline (TC)). The adsorption capacities for MB, RhB, Cu2+, Ni2+, and TC were 201 mg/g, 385 mg/g, 417 mg/g, 280 mg/g, and 263 mg/g, respectively. Besides that, hp-BNNSs also exhibited a fast adsorption rate for industrial dyes as 99 % MB and RhB were removed from the solution within 20 min. Significantly, this excellent performance of hp-BNNSs demonstrated its great potential in versatile water treatment.