Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) announced on Thursday that a research team led by Professor Oh Hyun Cheol from the Department of Chemistry, in collaboration with Germany’s Helmholtz Research Institute and Professor Kim Ja Hun’s team from Soongsil University, has developed a porous material capable of separating deuterium and hydrogen at -153°C (-243.4°F).
This temperature surpasses -162°C (-259.6°F), the liquefaction point of natural gas, by more than 10 degrees, marking a significant advancement toward commercial viability.
Deuterium is a crucial fuel for next-generation nuclear fusion power. Although demand has surged in semiconductor processing and other industries, production remains challenging and costly. This difficulty arises from deuterium’s physical and chemical similarity to regular hydrogen, requiring separation through an ultra-low-temperature distillation process at -253°C (-423.4°F).
Recent studies have explored using metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)—a class of porous materials—to separate deuterium. However, conventional MOFs lose efficiency at higher temperatures.
The newly developed copper-based MOF maintains deuterium separation efficiency even at -153°C (-243.4°F). By contrast, standard MOFs operate effectively at -250°C (-418°F) but suffer performance declines around -193°C (-315.4°F).
The research team identified the key mechanism behind this breakthrough: temperature-induced framework lattice expansion.
At cryogenic temperatures, the pores in the developed MOF remain smaller than hydrogen molecules, blocking gas passage. However, the lattice structure expands as the temperature rises, enlarging the pores.
This expansion enables gas molecules to pass through, with quantum effects facilitating the separation of hydrogen and deuterium. Quantum effects describe the phenomenon where heavier elements move more quickly through pores at low temperatures.
Real-time X-ray diffraction and neutron scattering experiments confirmed that the framework structure physically expands with rising temperatures. Furthermore, thermal desorption analysis demonstrated that the MOF maintains stable deuterium separation even at elevated temperatures.
Oh highlighted the material’s advantages: “Our newly developed material consumes significantly less energy while achieving high separation efficiency than traditional ultra-low-temperature distillation. Since its operating temperature surpasses natural gas condensation levels, it can be directly integrated into existing liquefied natural gas (LNG) production facilities, offering substantial industrial benefits.”
Dr. Margarita Russina from the Helmholtz Institute Berlin Energy Materials Research Center. Jung Min Ji and Park Jae Woo of UNIST were the co-first authors.
The findings were published in the international journal Nature Communications on February 27. The research received support from the Ministry of Science and ICT under its Mid-Career Research Program and the Overseas Large Research Facilities Utilization Research Support Program.