Pyro-layered heterostructured nanosheet membrane for hydrogen separation
Ruoxin Wang, Jianhao Qian, Xiaofang Chen, Ze‐Xian Low, Yu Chen, Hongyu Ma, HengAn Wu, Cara M. Doherty, Durga Acharya, Zongli Xie, Matthew R. Hill, Wei Shen, Fengchao Wang, Huanting Wang
Abstract
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 H 2 permeability of 849 Barrer, with a H 2 /CO 2 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.