"White graphite" will help electric cars to drive three times longer

The MISIS staff received a new material from boron nitride, which is also called "white graphite". It is able to hold three times more hydrogen than the most capacious metal-organic frameworks (porous polymers) today, and exceeds the capabilities of activated carbon by almost an order of magnitude, which is also now used for these purposes.

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The use of "white graphite" will make it possible to place more hydrogen fuel in the car and, consequently, increase its power reserve. At the same time, expensive reagents are not needed for the production of the material and it is not difficult to organize its industrial production. In order to increase the volume of absorbed gas, the developers deliberately created defects in the structure of boron nitrite, where hydrogen can be placed.

"Previously, it was believed that the greater the hydrogen sorption, the greater the specific surface area of the material. We found out that there is another parameter that affects the absorption of hydrogen — atomic vacancies, that is, structural defects. To create them, we synthesized boron nitride nanoparticles along with carbon and oxygen atoms, and then removed some of these atoms from the structure by processing in hydrogen at high temperature," said Andrey Matveev, senior researcher at the NUST MISIS Inorganic Nanomaterials Research Center.

Hydrogen energy can become an environmentally friendly replacement for traditional hydrocarbon energy. According to the concept of its development in the Russian Federation, up to 10% of passenger transport should run on hydrogen by 2030.

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

From the first gas: "white graphite" will help electric cars to drive three times longer