An adsorbent material fabricated into a reinforcement-free, self-supported coherent thin sheet and configured for use as a parallel passage contactor element in adsorption/separation applications with gases and liquids is disclosed. The adsorbent sheet material is obtained by enmeshing fine adsorbent particulates in a polymer binder. Particulates include but are not limited to carbon particles, inorganic oxides particles, or ceramic particles, or synthetic polymer resin particles. The adsorbent sheet advantageously contains a large volume percentage of active adsorbent particles. The parallel passage contactor device fabricated from the adsorbent sheet material is characterized by minimal mass transfer resistance and better separation efficiency expressed as height equivalent to a theoretical plate, while it maintains most of the adsorptive properties of the starting particulates, and can be used in gas separation applications with short adsorption cycles, such as rapid pressure swing adsorption, rotary concentrators, rapid electric swing adsorption.