Boron nitride: a promising material for proton exchange membranes for energy applications

Boron nitride (BN) is an exciting material and has drawn the attention of researchers for the last decade due to its surprising properties, including large surface area, thermomechanical stability, and high chemical resistance. Functionalization of BN is a new area of interest to build up novel properties and applications of BN. BN and functionalized BN are promising membrane materials and show enormous advantages ascribed to their simple synthesis, high surface area, mechanical and thermal stability, and distinctive mechanical properties. BN-based proton exchange membranes show improvement in their physicochemical, electrochemical, thermal, mechanical, and barrier properties. Only a few research studies have been carried out on BN-based highly stable proton exchange membranes (PEMs) for various electrochemical applications. In this review, we discuss the recent advances in the functionalization of BN by different methods. The synthesis of different proton exchange membranes has also been discussed in this article. In addition, the potential applications of hybrid proton exchange membranes have also been mentioned.