Highly-dispersible boron nitride nanoparticles by spray drying and pyrolysis

A spray drying and pyrolysis synthesis route was developed and it successfully prepared boron nitride (BN) nanoparticles with high dispersivity. During the experiment, the extremely rapid drying of the boric acid/urea solution during the spray-drying process resulted in the formation of homogeneous precursors, which was the key for the final pyrolysis synthesis of BN nanoparticles with high dispersibility and uniform diameters (~20 nm). Compared with boron nitride synthesized without using spray drying, the as-prepared BN nanoparticles possess higher specific surface area (145.01 m2 g−1) and larger pore volume (0.41 cm3 g−1). Especially, we used the BN nanoparticles as lubricant and incorporated it into the liquid paraffin (LP). The experiment results show that the LP presents outstanding antifriction properties for a BN content of 1.5 wt%. These results suggest that the h-BN nanoparticles have significant potential applications in the field of tribology.