Abstract
Natural gas is currently the main industrial source of helium, thus
He/CH4 separation has become increasing important, where two-dimensional
materials have been considered to be a potential solution, but the gas
transport mechanism within nanopores is not yet clear. Here, both
non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) and equilibrium MD (EMD) were
employed to study the transport of He/CH4 through nanopores of different
MXenes with various pore diameters (d), nanopores’ density and
functional groups, which shows two main transport mechanisms, molecular
sieving or Knudsen diffusion. Small d is found to be crucial for the
molecular sieving mechanism and consequently, high He/CH4 selectivity
(SHe/CH4). The density profiles of He/CH4 along permeation direction
from EMD simulations were used to predict SHe/CH4 and permeance for the
gas passing through different nanopores, yielding results well agreeing
with NEMD simulations. This work provides theoretical insights into gas
transport in MXene nanopore for future nanopore designing engineering.