Perfect proton selectivity in ion transport through two-dimensional crystals

L. Mogg, S. Zhang (), G.-P. Hao, K. Gopinadhan, D. Barry, B. L. Liu, H. M. Cheng, A. K. Geim () and M. Lozada-Hidalgo ()
Additional contact information
L. Mogg: The University of Manchester
S. Zhang: The University of Manchester
G.-P. Hao: The University of Manchester
K. Gopinadhan: The University of Manchester
D. Barry: The University of Manchester
B. L. Liu: Tsinghua University
H. M. Cheng: Tsinghua University
A. K. Geim: The University of Manchester
M. Lozada-Hidalgo: The University of Manchester

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-5

Abstract: Abstract Defect-free monolayers of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride are surprisingly permeable to thermal protons, despite being completely impenetrable to all gases. It remains untested whether small ions can permeate through the two-dimensional crystals. Here we show that mechanically exfoliated graphene and hexagonal boron nitride exhibit perfect Nernst selectivity such that only protons can permeate through, with no detectable flow of counterions. In the experiments, we use suspended monolayers that have few, if any, atomic-scale defects, as shown by gas permeation tests, and place them to separate reservoirs filled with hydrochloric acid solutions. Protons account for all the electrical current and chloride ions are blocked. This result corroborates the previous conclusion that thermal protons can pierce defect-free two-dimensional crystals. Besides the importance for theoretical developments, our results are also of interest for research on various separation technologies based on two-dimensional materials.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12314-2 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-12314-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12314-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().