Research progress in preparation of hexagonal boron nitride aerogels and their applications in thermal conductivity and adsorption

Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) has the similar structure as graphitic material.It has excellent mechanical strength, wide band gap, high chemical oxidation resistance, good electrical insulation and outstanding thermal conductivity, and has attracted increasing attention of many researchers.However, nanoscale h-BN is difficult to disperse and easy to agglomerate in solution that greatly restricts its practical applications.h-BN based aerogels has low density, good mechanical strength and outstanding thermal conductivity that can be used as ultralight thermal conductive materials or act as thermal conductive fillers in polymer.In addition, h-BN based aerogels possess adjustable porous structure, high specific surface area and compressibility, which can be used as an ideal adsorption material to absorb the toxic gas in air or heavy metal ions and organic pollutions in water.Based on the research progress at home and abroad, this article summarizes the preparation methods of h-BN based aerogels, such as freeze-drying method, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process, template method, and composite crosslinking method, etc.Finally, the applications of the h-BN based aerogels in heat transfer and adsorption are disccussed in detail.