Hidden porous boron nitride as a high-efficiency membrane for hydrogen purification

Abstract

Nanoporous atom-thick two-dimensional materials with uniform pore size distribution and excellent mechanical strength have been considered as the ideal membranes for hydrogen purification. Here, our first-principles structure search has unravelled four porous boron nitride monolayers (m-BN, t-BN, h′-BN and h′′-BN) that are metastable relative to h-BN. Especially, h′-BN consisting of B₆N₆ rings exhibits outstanding selectivity and permeability for hydrogen purification, higher than those of common membranes. Importantly, h′-BN possesses the mechanical strength to sustain a stress of 48 GPa, which is two orders of magnitude higher than that (0.38 GPa) of a recently reported graphene-nanomesh/single-walled carbon nanotube network hybrid membrane. The excellent selectivity, permeability and mechanical strength make h′-BN an ideal candidate for hydrogen purification.