Nanowerk  October 31, 2022
Boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) possess a broad range of applications because of several engineering-relevant properties, including high specific strength and stiffness, thermal stability, and transparency to visible light. The morphology of the nanoscale fibers must be controlled to maximize such properties, which can be achieved by synthesizing long aligned arrays of crystalline hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) nanotubes. An international team of researchers (USA – MIT, Japan) synthesized high-quality millimeter length, vertically aligned (VA-) BNNTs using free-standing carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays as scaffolds. In addition to high optical transparency of the VA-BNNTs, they also demonstrated several micro- and macrostructures of BNNTs via patterning and/or postprocessing of the arrays, including engineering of either disconnected or interconnected tubes in VA-, horizontally aligned (HA-), or coherently buckled BNNTs. The internanotube spacings and interconnections between aligned BNNT can thus be tailored to create BN macrostructures with complex shapes and advantaged morphologies for hierarchical materials and devices… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Graphical abstract. Credit: ACS Nano 2022, XXXX, XXX, XXX-XXX, October 31, 2022Â