Pyro-layered heterostructured nanosheet membrane for hydrogen separation

RX Wang and JH Qian and XF Chen and ZX Low and Y Chen and HY Ma and HA Wu and CM Doherty and D Acharya and ZL Xie and MR Hill and W Shen and FC Wang and HT Wang, NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 14, 2161 (2023).

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37932-9

Engineering different two-dimensional materials into heterostructured membranes with unique physiochemical properties and molecular sieving channels offers an effective way to design membranes for fast and selective gas molecule transport. Here we develop a simple and versatile pyro-layering approach to fabricate heterostructured membranes from boron nitride nanosheets as the main scaffold and graphene nanosheets derived from a chitosan precursor as the filler. The rearrangement of the graphene nanosheets adjoining the boron nitride nanosheets during the pyro-layering treatment forms precise in-plane slit-like nanochannels and a plane-to-plane spacing of similar to 3.0 angstrom, thereby endowing specific gas transport pathways for selective hydrogen transport. The heterostructured membrane shows a high H-2 permeability of 849 Barrer, with a H-2/CO2 selectivity of 290. This facile and scalable technique holds great promise for the fabrication of heterostructures as next-generation membranes for enhancing the efficiency of gas separation and purification processes. Engineering 2D heterostructures with unique physiochemical properties and molecular sieving channels is one approach for designing membranes selective gas molecule transport. Here authors arrange graphene and boron nitride nanosheets in an alternating pattern, resulting in narrow porous nanochannels and excellent hydrogen separation properties.

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