Ultrahigh resistance of hexagonal boron nitride to mineral scale formation

Kuichang Zuo; Xiang Zhang; Xiaochuan Huang; Eliezer F Oliveira; Hua Guo; Tianshu Zhai; Weipeng Wang; Pedro J J Alvarez; Menachem Elimelech; Pulickel M Ajayan; Jun Lou; Qilin Li

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-32193-4

Ultrahigh resistance of hexagonal boron nitride to mineral scale formation

Nat Commun. 2022 Aug 4;13(1):4523. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-32193-4.

Authors

Kuichang Zuo^#^{1

2

3}, Xiang Zhang^#^{3

4}, Xiaochuan Huang^{2

3}, Eliezer F Oliveira^{4

5}, Hua Guo⁴, Tianshu Zhai⁴, Weipeng Wang⁶, Pedro J J Alvarez^{2

3}, Menachem Elimelech^{3

7}, Pulickel M Ajayan^{8

9}, Jun Lou^{10

11

12}, Qilin Li^{13

14

15

16}

Affiliations

¹ The Key Laboratory of Water and Sediment Sciences, Ministry of Education; College of Environment Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.
² Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, MS 519, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
³ NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment, Rice University, MS 6398, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
⁵ São Paulo State Department of Education, São Paulo, Brazil.
⁶ Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials (MOE), School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, PR China. wpwang@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn.
⁷ Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06520-8286, USA.
⁸ NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment, Rice University, MS 6398, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA. ajayan@rice.edu.
⁹ Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA. ajayan@rice.edu.
¹⁰ NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment, Rice University, MS 6398, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA. jlou@rice.edu.
¹¹ Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA. jlou@rice.edu.
¹² Department of Chemistry, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA. jlou@rice.edu.
¹³ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, MS 519, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA. qilin.li@rice.edu.
¹⁴ NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment, Rice University, MS 6398, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA. qilin.li@rice.edu.
¹⁵ Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA. qilin.li@rice.edu.
¹⁶ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX, 77005, USA. qilin.li@rice.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Formation of mineral scale on a material surface has profound impact on a wide range of natural processes as well as industrial applications. However, how specific material surface characteristics affect the mineral-surface interactions and subsequent mineral scale formation is not well understood. Here we report the superior resistance of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) to mineral scale formation compared to not only common metal and polymer surfaces but also the highly scaling-resistant graphene, making hBN possibly the most scaling resistant material reported to date. Experimental and simulation results reveal that this ultrahigh scaling-resistance is attributed to the combination of hBN's atomically-smooth surface, in-plane atomic energy corrugation due to the polar boron-nitrogen bond, and the close match between its interatomic spacing and the size of water molecules. The latter two properties lead to strong polar interactions with water and hence the formation of a dense hydration layer, which strongly hinders the approach of mineral ions and crystals, decreasing both surface heterogeneous nucleation and crystal attachment.