Membranes made from graphene can act as a sieve, separating protons – nuclei of hydrogen – from heavier nuclei of hydrogen isotope deuterium. Deuterium is widely used in analytical and chemical tracing technologies and, also, as heavy water required in thousands of tons for operation of nuclear power stations.
The heaviest isotope, tritium, is radioactive and needs to be safely removed as a by-product of electricity generation at nuclear fission plants. Future nuclear technology is based on fusion of the two heavy isotopes.
The researchers tested whether deuterons – nuclei of deuterium – can pass through graphene and boron nitride. They found that deuterons were not only effectively sieved out by the one atom thick membranes, but were sieved with high separation efficiency.
Furthermore, the researchers showed that the separation is fully scalable. Using chemical-vapour-deposited (CVD) graphene, they built centimetre-sized devices to effectively pump out hydrogen from a mixture of deuterium and hydrogen.
Dr Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo, University of Manchester postdoctoral researcher said: “This is really the first membrane shown to distinguish between subatomic particles, all at room temperature.
“Now that we showed that it is a fully scalable technology, we hope it will quickly find its way to real applications.”