Mechanically activated catalyst mixing for high-yield boron nitride nanotube growth

Mechanically activated catalyst mixing for high-yield boron nitride nanotube growth

Boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) have many fascinating properties and a wide range of applications. An improved ball milling method has been developed for high-yield BNNT synthesis, in which metal nitrate, such as Fe(NO3)3, and amorphous boron powder are milled together to prepare a more effective precursor. The heating of the precursor in nitrogen-containing gas produces a high density of BNNTs...

Computational study of boron nitride nanotube synthesis: How catalyst morphology stabilizes the boron nitride bond

S. Riikonen,1 A. S. Foster,1,2 A. V. Krasheninnikov,1,3 and R. M. Nieminen1,* 1COMP/Department of Applied Physics, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 1100, Helsinki FI-02015, Finland 2Department of Physics, Tampere University of Technology, P.O. Box 692, FI-33101 TUT Tampere, Finland 3Materials Physics Division, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 43, Helsinki FI-00014, Finland Received 1...

Boron Nitride Nanotube Peapods

We demonstrate that boron nitride (BN) nanotubes can be filled "peapod" fashion with C60 molecules. Filling small-diameter BN nanotubes results in a linear chain of C60 molecules in the interior, while filling large diameter BN nanotubes leads to nanorods of crystalline C60 in the interior. Electron beam damage can be used to fuse the encapsulated C60 molecules into carbon nanotubes, leading to...

Boron Nitride Nanotube: Synthesis and Applications

Scientists have predicted that carbon’s immediate neighbors on the periodic chart, boron and nitrogen, may also form perfect nanotubes, since the advent of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in 1991. First proposed then synthesized by researchers at UC Berkeley in the mid 1990’s, the boron nitride nanotube (BNNT) has proven very difficult to make until now. Herein we provide an update on a catalyst-free m...

Carbon nanotube and boron nitride nanotube hostedC60â•fiV nanopeapods