1
|
Zhou Z, Zhao K, Chi HY, Shen Y, Song S, Hsu KJ, Chevalier M, Shi W, Agrawal KV. Electrochemical-repaired porous graphene membranes for precise ion-ion separation. Nat Commun 2024; 15:4006. [PMID: 38740849 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48419-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/23/2023] [Accepted: 04/26/2024] [Indexed: 05/16/2024] Open
Abstract
The preparation of atom-thick porous lattice hosting Å-scale pores is attractive to achieve a large ion-ion selectivity in combination with a large ion flux. Graphene film is an ideal selective layer for this if high-precision pores can be incorporated, however, it is challenging to avoid larger non-selective pores at the tail-end of the pore size distribution which reduces ion-ion selectivity. Herein, we develop a strategy to overcome this challenge using an electrochemical repair strategy that successfully masks larger pores in large-area graphene. 10-nm-thick electropolymerized conjugated microporous polymer (CMP) layer is successfully deposited on graphene, thanks to a strong π-π interaction in these two materials. While the CMP layer itself is not selective, it effectively masks graphene pores, leading to a large Li+/Mg2+ selectivity from zero-dimensional pores reaching 300 with a high Li+ ion permeation rate surpassing the performance of reported materials for ion-ion separation. Overall, this scalable repair strategy enables the fabrication of monolayer graphene membranes with customizable pore sizes, limiting the contribution of nonselective pores, and offering graphene membranes a versatile platform for a broad spectrum of challenging separations.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Zongyao Zhou
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
- State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150090, P. R. China
| | - Kangning Zhao
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Heng-Yu Chi
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Yueqing Shen
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Shuqing Song
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Kuang-Jung Hsu
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Mojtaba Chevalier
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland
| | - Wenxiong Shi
- Institute for New Energy Materials and Low Carbon Technologies, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, 300387, P. R. China
| | - Kumar Varoon Agrawal
- Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Sion, CH-1950, Switzerland.
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Goethem CV, Shen Y, Chi HY, Mensi M, Zhao K, Nijmeijer A, Just PE, Agrawal KV. Advancing Molecular Sieving via Å-Scale Pore Tuning in Bottom-Up Graphene Synthesis. ACS NANO 2024. [PMID: 38324377 PMCID: PMC10883125 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.3c11885] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/08/2024]
Abstract
Porous graphene films are attractive as a gas separation membrane given that the selective layer can be just one atom thick, allowing high-flux separation. A favorable aspect of porous graphene is that the pore size, essentially gaps created by lattice defects, can be tuned. While this has been demonstrated for postsynthetic, top-down pore etching in graphene, it does not exist in the more scalable, bottom-up synthesis of porous graphene. Inspired by the mechanism of precipitation-based synthesis of porous graphene over catalytic nickel foil, we herein conceive an extremely simple way to tune the pore size. This is implemented by increasing the cooling rate by over 100-fold from -1 °C min-1 to over -5 °C s-1. Rapid cooling restricts carbon diffusion, resulting in a higher availability of dissolved carbon for precipitation, as evidenced by quantitative carbon-diffusion simulation, measurement of carbon concentration as a function of nickel depth, and imaging of the graphene nanostructure. The resulting enhanced grain (inter)growth reduces the effective pore size which leads to an increase of the H2/CH4 separation factor from 6.2 up to 53.3.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Cédric Van Goethem
- Laboratory for Advanced Separations (LAS), Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Rue de l'industrie 17, 1950 Sion, Switzerland
| | - Yueqing Shen
- Laboratory for Advanced Separations (LAS), Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Rue de l'industrie 17, 1950 Sion, Switzerland
| | - Heng-Yu Chi
- Laboratory for Advanced Separations (LAS), Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Rue de l'industrie 17, 1950 Sion, Switzerland
| | - Mounir Mensi
- X-ray Diffraction and Surface Analytics Platform (XRD-SAP), Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL-Valais Wallis), Rue de l'industrie 17, 1950 Sion, Switzerland
| | - Kangning Zhao
- Laboratory for Advanced Separations (LAS), Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Rue de l'industrie 17, 1950 Sion, Switzerland
| | - Arian Nijmeijer
- Shell Global Solutions International B.V., P.O. Box 38000, 1030 BN Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Inorganic Membranes, MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
| | - Paul-Emmanuel Just
- Shell Global Solutions International B.V., P.O. Box 38000, 1030 BN Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Kumar Varoon Agrawal
- Laboratory for Advanced Separations (LAS), Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Rue de l'industrie 17, 1950 Sion, Switzerland
| |
Collapse
|