Silver Nanoparticle-Decorated Boron Nitride with Tunable Electronic Properties for Enhancement of Adsorption Performance

In this paper, a series of silver nanoparticle (AgNP)-decorated boron nitride (Ag-BN) with different Ag amounts were successfully synthesized by a one-pot pyrolysis method and used as novel high-efficiency adsorbents for the removal of organic pollutant tetracycline (TC) and rhodamine B (RhB). According to the adsorption capacity of the samples, the obtained optimal Ag/B molar ratio was 1%. The adsorption data fitted well with the pseudo-second-order kinetics and Langmuir isotherm models with the maximum adsorption capacity of 358 and 880 mg/g for TC and RhB, respectively. The thermodynamic studies suggested that the adsorption process was spontaneous and endothermic in nature. The introduction of AgNP onto BN enhanced the adsorption capacity on account of tunable electronic properties. The adsorption mechanism is discussed in detail with the effect of pH, density function theory (DFT), and thermodynamics.