Preparation of hydrophobic polyvinyl alcohol aerogel via the surface modification of boron nitride for environmental remediation

Macroscopic polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) aerogel is of great interest in environmental remediation due to its low cost and easy fabrication. However, the hydrophily of PVA aerogel limited its application in oil-water separation. In this work, boron nitride (BN)-modified PVA aerogel has been successfully prepared by a cost-effective frozen-drying method. PVA plays a role as a scaffold of aerogel to support BN nanosheets which can modify the surface...