Highly stable graphene-oxide-based membranes with superior permeability

Increasing fresh water demand for drinking and agriculture is one of the grand challenges of our age. Graphene oxide (GO) membranes have shown a great potential for desalination and water purification. However, it is challenging to further improve the water permeability without sacrificing the separ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2018-04, Vol.9 (1), p.1486-8, Article 1486
Main Authors: Thebo, Khalid Hussain, Qian, Xitang, Zhang, Qing, Chen, Long, Cheng, Hui-Ming, Ren, Wencai
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
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639/301/357/918/1055
Amino acids
Crosslinking
Desalination
Drinking water
Fresh water
Freshwater environments
Graphene
Humanities and Social Sciences
Interlayers
Membrane permeability
Membranes
Methylene blue
multidisciplinary
Permeability
Purification
Reducing agents
Rhodamine
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Separation
Tannic acid
Theanine
Water damage
Water demand
Water purification
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Summary:Increasing fresh water demand for drinking and agriculture is one of the grand challenges of our age. Graphene oxide (GO) membranes have shown a great potential for desalination and water purification. However, it is challenging to further improve the water permeability without sacrificing the separation efficiency, and the GO membranes are easily delaminated in aqueous solutions within few hours. Here, we report a class of reduced GO membranes with enlarged interlayer distance fabricated by using theanine amino acid and tannic acid as reducing agent and cross-linker. Such membranes show water permeance over 10,000 L m −2 h −1 bar −1 , which is 10–1000 times higher than those of previously reported GO-based membranes and commercial membranes, and good separation efficiency, e.g., rhodamine B and methylene blue rejection of ~100%. Moreover, they show no damage or delamination in water, acid, and basic solutions even after months. Graphene oxide membranes show great potential for water filtering, but improving their performance and stability remains difficult. Here, the authors use theanine amino acid and tannic acid to reduce and cross-link graphene oxide membranes with remarkably high permeability and stability in aqueous solution.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-018-03919-0