Xiaofang Chen, Yao Qin, Yudan Zhu, Xueling Pan, Yuqi Wang, Hongyu Ma, Ruoxin Wang, Christopher D Easton, Yu Chen, Cheng Tang, Aijun Du, Aisheng Huang, Zongli Xie, Xiwang Zhang, George P Simon, Mark M Banaszak Holl, Xiaohua Lu, Kostya Novoselov, Huanting Wang
Nanosheet-based membranes have shown enormous potential for energy-efficient molecular transport and separation applications, but designing these membranes for specific separations remains a great challenge due to the lack of good understanding of fluid transport mechanisms in complex nanochannels. We synthesized reduced MXene/graphene hetero-channel membranes with sub-1-nm pores for experimental measurements and theoretical modeling of their structures and fluid transport rates. Our experiments showed that upon complete rejection of salt and organic dyes, these membranes with subnanometer channels exhibit remarkably high solvent fluxes, and their solvent transport behavior is very different from their homo-structured counterparts...
April 26, 2024: Science Advances