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Advanced hybrid nanosheet membranes with stable nanochannels for ultrafast molecular separation

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-29, 23:45 authored by Qi Guo, Mao Xu, Qi Tang, Yuchen Liu, Weiyu Zhang, Chan Guo, Xiaoli Zhao, Yujun Zhu, Sheng Ye, Dan LiuDan Liu, Weiwei LeiWeiwei Lei, Cheng Chen
AbstractLamellar graphene oxide (GO) membranes have gained substantial interest for molecular separation processes. However, GO membranes have shown inefficient separation performance levels due to their possession of sufficient functional groups that lead to swelling under applied hydraulic pressure. Herein, we demonstrate a highly stable and ultrafast filtrable graphene oxide-boron nitride (GOBN) hybrid membrane by incorporating boron nitride (BN) nanosheets into a GO membrane to restrict swelling and provide efficient hydraulic pressure separation characteristics. This new heterostructure retains the GOBN membrane microstructure and provides more nanochannels around the incorporation sites due to the small size of BN nanosheets; this phenomenon increases the permeance to 1310 Lm−2h−1bar−1, which is nearly six times higher than that of the pure GO membrane, with a high rejection reaching 99.2% for aqueous organic dyes. More importantly, the GOBN hybrid membrane shows an impressive permeance and dye molecule rejection performance characteristic across a range of organic solvents, such as methanol, ethanol, and isopropyl alcohol; the performance characteristics are better than those for the GO membrane. Our GOBN membrane with a stable microstructure opens opportunities for developing a high-performance multiple solvent nanofiltration membrane that surpasses the permeability-selectivity trade-off.

History

Journal

NPJ CLEAN WATER

Volume

6

Article number

ARTN 38

Location

London, Eng.

ISSN

2059-7037

eISSN

2059-7037

Language

English

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Issue

1

Publisher

NATURE PORTFOLIO