Boron nitride multiwall nanotubes decorated with BN nanosheets

Abstract

We report a simple chemical-route to BN multiwall nanotubes decorated with nanosheets. These nanostructures have been prepared on a large scale from a simple unique chemical process under an ammonia flow onto the surface of an alumina substrate, using carbon precursors and boron oxide as solid sources. The as-grown BN NTs are intermixed, their average length is difficult to estimate precisely but has been evaluated by SEM to several hundreds of micrometres. TEM observations show that the diameter is homogeneous in the range 40-60 nm. These NTs are decorated with BN nanosheets along their length. These nanostructures may lead to novel nanomaterials with important applications in different fields such as composite materials, hydrogen storage systems, to field-emission (FE) based devices. © 2011 The Royal Society of Chemistry.