Water desalination using nanoporous single-layer graphene

作者：Surwade, Sumedh P.; Smirnov, Sergei N.; Vlassiouk, Ivan V.^*; Unocic, Raymond R.; Veith, Gabriel M.; Dai, Sheng; Mahurin, Shannon M.

来源：Nature Nanotechnology, 2015, 10(5): 459-464.

DOI：10.1038/NNANO.2015.37

• CHEMICAL-VAPOR-DEPOSITION
• CARBON NANOTUBES
• POROUS GRAPHENE
• OXIDE MEMBRANES
• TRANSPORT
• SEPARATION
• ULTRATHIN
• HYDROGEN
• TECHNOLOGY
• PERMEATION

By creating nanoscale pores in a layer of graphene, it could be used as an effective separation membrane due to its chemical and mechanical stability, its flexibility and, most importantly, its one-atom thickness. Theoretical studies have indicated that the performance of such membranes should be superior to state-of-the-art polymer-based filtration membranes, and experimental studies have recently begun to explore their potential. Here, we show that single-layer porous graphene can be used as a desalination membrane. Nanometre-sized pores are created in a graphene monolayer using an oxygen plasma etching process, which allows the size of the pores to be tuned. The resulting membranes exhibit a salt rejection rate of nearly 100% and rapid water transport. In particular, water fluxes of up to 10(6) g m(-2) s(-1) at 40 degrees C were measured using pressure difference as a driving force, while water fluxes measured using osmotic pressure as a driving force did not exceed 70 g m(-2) s(-1) atm(-1).

• 出版日期2015-5