Research progress in liquid phase exfoliation of boron nitride and their applications in thermal management of electronic devices

Boron nitride nanosheets (BNNS) exhibit prominent thermal conductivity, good electrical insulation, as well as high chemical and thermal stability, thus showing their promising application in thermal management of electronic devices. However, it is still challenging to obtain BNNS with high quality by facile and scalable production methods. Liquid phase exfoliation is considered to be one of the most promising methods to prepare BNNS due to its facile and scalable preparation procedure of nanosheets with high quality. Recent advances in liquid phase exfoliation methods for the preparation of BNNS were summarized in this review, with specially focusing on solvent selection of h-BN exfoliation, non-covalent and covalent surface modification of boron nitride. Furthermore, the exfoliation mechanism of the above three methods and the existing shortcomings were discussed in details(environmental problems caused by organic solvents,poor compatibility in some modifiers,difficulties in covalent bond modification).With the further study of the exfoliation mechanism,the liquid phase exfoliation method will be able to meet the requirement of high quality and high efficiency preparation of BNNS,making it play an important role in the thermal management of electronic devices.