麻豆淫院

A research team affiliated with UNIST has successfully developed a new porous material for the efficient separation of deuterium, a primary fuel for nuclear fusion. The team, jointly led by Professors Wonyoung Cho and Hyunchul Oh in the Department of Chemistry at UNIST, in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a form of porous and crystalline materials constructed by the formation of chemical bonds between metal ions and organic ligands. A MOF separates the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium from ordinary hydrogen, just like grain sieves that detect millet and other grains for screening and grading.

The newly-developed MOF exhibits remarkable efficiency in deuterium separation, even at temperatures above the liquefied natural gas (LNG) liquefaction temperature (111K, -162.15掳C). This is a significant improvement over the traditional method, which requires much colder cryogenic temperatures below 20K (-253.15掳C).

The team employed an entropy-driven design strategy to create this new material. By mixing different organic ligands, similar to creating a cocktail, they increased the structural disorder, or entropy, within the MOF. This high-entropy state optimized the process of quantum sieving, which separates hydrogen and deuterium based on their differing diffusion rates.

Quantum sieving exploits the differences in diffusion rates between hydrogen and deuterium. This results in a higher proportion of narrow pores in the framework, thereby improving the efficiency of the quantum sieving. The team confirmed this through X-ray diffraction and hydrogen isotope breakthrough experiments.

According to Professor Cho, "This study marks the first application of high-entropy porous materials for gas separation and adsorption, confirming the potential of entropy-based design."

He adds, "We hope this technology will contribute to the use of clean energy resources and the development of future energy technologies."