Nature Communications (Apr 2023)

Pyro-layered heterostructured nanosheet membrane for hydrogen separation

  • Ruoxin Wang,
  • Jianhao Qian,
  • Xiaofang Chen,
  • Ze-Xian Low,
  • Yu Chen,
  • Hongyu Ma,
  • Heng-An Wu,
  • Cara M. Doherty,
  • Durga Acharya,
  • Zongli Xie,
  • Matthew R. Hill,
  • Wei Shen,
  • Fengchao Wang,
  • Huanting Wang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37932-9
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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Abstract 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 ~3.0 Å, thereby endowing specific gas transport pathways for selective hydrogen transport. The heterostructured membrane shows a high H2 permeability of 849 Barrer, with a H2/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.