Porous boron nitride - moving up the scale

This PhD project focuses on the understanding and use of porous boron nitride from laboratory to manufacturing scale. This work is carried out in collaboration with BP-ICAM.
Porous boron nitride (BN) exhibits high thermal and chemical stability, alongside high porosity and surface area. These properties make this nanomaterial a potential adsorbent for gas and liquid separation processes.
This project primarily aims to: i) understand the impact of large-scale processes on BN's synthesis and characteristics; ii) produce BN in industry-relevant format and assess the adsorption performance of these novel materials; iii) understand the mechanisms underlying BN's formation to tackle potential instability constraints (e.g. water).
The characterisation techniques used during this project will include microscopy imaging (e.g. Scanning Electron Microscopy), spectroscopy (e.g. Fourier Transform InfraRed) and porosity measurements.