Tiny filters, big news: Novel process uses graphene and boron nitride monolayers to separate hydrogen ion isotopes
(Phys.org)—Conventional membranes used for sieving atomic and molecular species cannot scale to the subatomic level, making them unable to separate hydrogen isotope ions (protons, deuterons and tritons). At the same time, there are no current methods of directly separating these isotopes, and current approaches are extremely energy-intensive and therefore expensive – sometimes prohibitively so. Recently, however, scientists at the University of Manchester (UK) demonstrated a novel, scalable and highly competitive approach that uses monolayers of graphene and boron nitride as extremely fine sieves to separate hydrogen isotopes. Moreover, in addition to the new approach's simple and robust sieving mechanism, it offers straightforward setups and the need for only water as input without requiring additional chemical compounds.