Boron nitride (h-BN), which is an isoelectronic analogue of graphite, has received immense attention due to its unique physical and chemical properties. Numerous methods have been developed to isolate few-layered h-BN nanosheets. These include chemical vapour deposition, solution-based exfoliation and ball-milling amongst others. The bipolar electrochemical method is one of the popular, scalable and water based exfoliation methods which has been applied to graphite, layered transition metal dichalcogenides and black phosphorus. This method was not applied to insulators as this has been assumed to be an impossible task. In this study, we report a solution-based, scalable and time efficient bipolar electrochemical method for the direct exfoliation of bulk insulator, layered h-BN into few-layered h-BN nanosheets based on bipolar electrochemistry. The electrochemical exfoliation of nonconductive materials, h-BN, opens the way to the application of this scalable method to the whole spectrum of non-conductive layered materials. This facile method offers an alternative platform for h-BN electrochemical exfoliation in wide-ranging fields encompassing electronics and biomedical science.

中文翻译：

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非极性层状六方氮化硼通过双极电化学剥离†

氮化硼（h- BN）是石墨的等电子类似物，由于其独特的物理和化学性质而受到了广泛的关注。已经开发出许多方法来分离几层的h - BN纳米片。其中包括化学气相沉积，基于溶液的剥离和球磨等。双极电化学方法是一种流行的，可扩展的水基剥落方法之一，已应用于石墨，层状过渡金属二卤化物和黑磷。该方法不适用于绝缘子，因为这被认为是不可能完成的任务。在这项研究中，我们报告了一种基于解决方案的，可扩展且省时的双极电化学方法，用于直接剥落层状大容量绝缘子基于双极电化学将h -BN分成几层的h - BN纳米片。非导电材料h- BN的电化学剥离为这种可扩展方法应用于非导电层状材料的整个光谱开辟了道路。这种简便的方法为包括电子和生物医学在内的广泛领域的h- BN电化学剥离提供了一个替代平台。