One more way to generate renewable energy is being tested through a new simple and clean method, which has shown promise

The study for a new way of generating renewable energy was supported by FAPESP through three projects

In an article published by Agência FAPESP, the new method of generating renewable energy is becoming a reality thanks to two-dimensional materials, which are gaining prominence thanks to their properties. The discovery deals with materials with a thickness ranging from just one atom to a few nanometers, which allow the miniaturization of devices in sectors such as electronics, health and energy. However, some of these materials are still difficult to produce on an industrial scale while maintaining the essential properties.

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In a work carried out at the Institute for Energy and Nuclear Research (Ipen) and recently published in the journal Materials Today Advances, researchers associated with the Center for Innovation in New Energies (CINE) and the Center for Science and Technology in Materials at Ipen demonstrated a significant contribution to the search for methods that make it feasible to industrially produce these ultrafine materials.

The researchers created a quick, clean and easy method to obtain hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets, which are composed of flattened layers of boron and nitrogen atoms arranged in the form of hexagons. Due to the electronic and mechanical properties and its high adsorption capacity, the material is promising to be applied in segments such as the generation and storage of renewable energy - one of the objectives of CINE, an Engineering Research Center (CPE) constituted by FAPESP in partnership with Shell.

How the material is produced

In order to obtain hexagonal boron nitride in two-dimensional form, it is necessary to exfoliate it, that is, to extract leaves with a few layers of thickness, starting from the macroscopic form. Popularly known as white graphene, hexagonal boron nitride resembles carbon material in many ways, but exfoliation is much more complicated.

“In this work, a method of exfoliation of boron nitride crystals in a material with few layers, of nanometric dimensions, was presented using the plasma of a modified Tesla coil”, explained Almir Oliveira Neto, researcher at Ipen and member of the CINE, who was the leader of the work.

The device in question, the Tesla coil, is simple and can be built by hand, being capable of producing high voltage discharges (flash arcs). These electrical discharges cause ionization in the surroundings, which forms the so-called "cold plasma", in which the electrons are in a higher energy state than the other particles.

 The exfoliation of boron nitride by the new method takes place when electrons are fired against a macroscopic amount of boron nitride. At that moment, a portion of the energy of the electrons is passed to the crystal structure, increasing the bond distance between the atomic layers, until the bond is broken.

According to Oliveira Neto and postdoctoral fellow Fernando Brambilla de Souza, the main authors of the article, the methodology is promising for industrially producing this two-dimensional material.

In addition to making it possible to scale up production, the method only uses boron nitride, electricity and nitrogen gas as raw materials. Furthermore, production can be carried out in just one step using compact equipment, which can be built easily and economically.

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