Nanoporous Atomically Thin Graphene Membranes for Desalting and Dialysis Applications

作者：Kidambi Piran R^*; Jang Doojoon; Idrobo Juan Carlos; Boutilier Michael S H; Wang Luda; Kong Jing; Karnik Rohit

来源：Advanced Materials, 2017, 29(33): 1700277.

DOI：10.1002/adma.201700277

• atomically thin membranes
• dialysis and desalting
• nanoporous graphene membranes
• selective transport
• sub-nanometer pores

Dialysis is a ubiquitous separation process in biochemical processing and biological research. State-of-the-art dialysis membranes comprise a relatively thick polymer layer with tortuous pores, and suffer from low rates of diffusion leading to extremely long process times (often several days) and poor selectivity, especially in the 0-1000 Da molecular weight cut-off range. Here, the fabrication of large-area (cm(2)) nanoporous atomically thin membranes (NATMs) is reported, by transferring graphene synthesized using scalable chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to polycarbonate track-etched supports. After sealing defects introduced during transfer/handling by interfacial polymerization, a facile oxygen-plasma etch is used to create size-selective pores (<= 1 nm) in the CVD graphene. Size-selective separation and desalting of small model molecules (approximate to 200-1355 Da) and proteins (approximate to 4 000 Da) are demonstrated, with approximate to 1-2 orders of magnitude increase in permeance compared to state-of-the-art commercial membranes. Rapid diffusion and size-selectivity in NATMs offers transformative opportunities in purification of drugs, removal of residual reactants, biochemical analytics, medical diagnostics, therapeutics, and nano-bio separations.

• 出版日期2017-9-6