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Quantum sieving from thermal desorption

Nature Reviews Chemistry (2026)Cite this article

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Thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS), also called temperature-programmed desorption, tracks how gases leave a surface as its temperature rises, making it a workhorse for extracting desorption kinetics and thermodynamics. This matters because adsorption strength and release-temperature govern the practical performance in, for example, hydrogen storage, gas purification, and isotopologue separation using porous materials, such as metal or covalent organic frameworks, zeolites, and more.

TDS provides a robust method to investigate quantum sieving, which enables the separation of dihydrogen isotopologues in porous materials containing ultramicropore or open metal sites. In a typical experiment, a specified amount of an equimolar H2/D2 mixture is adsorbed onto a surface at cryogenic temperatures, typically held at 20–100 K. Upon heating, the desorbed species are analysed by a calibrated mass spectrometer, with Pd95Ce5 used as the calibration standard, to quantify isotopic selectivity. To elucidate the underlying isotopologue separation mechanism, the desorption profiles are examined to determine whether selectivity arises from differences in binding energy, referred to as chemical affinity quantum sieving or from steric and diffusional constraints within narrow pores, referred to as kinetic quantum sieving.

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Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges M. Hirscher, H. Krautscheid and P. Sarkar for their support during the fabrication of the TDS instrument at Leipzig University.

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  1. Faculty of Chemistry, Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Sibo Chetry

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  1. Sibo Chetry
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Correspondence to Sibo Chetry.

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Chetry, S. Quantum sieving from thermal desorption. Nat Rev Chem (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-026-00815-w

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