Anisotropic thermal conductivity in carbon honeycomb

Highly efficient desalination performance of carbon honeycomb based reverse osmosis membranes unveiled by molecular dynamics simulations

Seawater desalination is vital to our modern civilization. Here, we report that the carbon honeycomb (CHC) has an outstanding water permeability and salt rejection in the seawater desalination, as revealed by molecular dynamics simulations. More than 92% of ions are rejected by CHC at applied pressures ranging from 50 to 250 MPa. CHC has a perfect salt rejection at pressures below 150 Mpa. On increasing the applied pressure up to 150 MPa, the salt rejection reduces only to 92%. Pressure, temperature and temperature gradient are noted to play a significant role in modulating the water flux. The water flux increases with pressure and temperature. With the introduction of a temperature gradient of 3.5 K nm^-1, the seawater permeability increases by 33% as compared to room temperature. The water permeability of the CHC is greater than other carbon materials and osmosis membranes including graphene (8.7 times) and graphyne (2.1 times). It indicates the significant potential of the CHC for commercial application in water purification.

Effect of Angle, Temperature and Vacancy Defects on Mechanical Properties of PSI-Graphene

The PSI-graphene, a two-dimensional structure, was a novel carbon allotrope. In this paper, based on molecular dynamics simulation, the effects of stretching direction, temperature and vacancy defects on the mechanical properties of PSI-graphene were studied. We found that when PSI-graphene was stretched along 0° and 90° at 300 K, the ultimate strength reached a maximum of about 65 GPa. And when stretched along 54.2° and 155.2° at 300 K, the Young’s modulus had peaks, which were 1105 GPa and 2082 GPa, respectively. In addition, when the temperature was raised from 300 K to 900 K, the ultimate strength in all directions was reduced. The fracture morphology of PSI-graphene stretched at different angles was also shown in the text. In addition, the number of points removed from PSI-graphene sheet also seriously affected the tensile properties of the material. It was found that, compared with graphene, PSI-graphene didn’t have the negative Poisson’s ratio phenomenon when it was stretched along the direction of 0°, 11.2°, 24.8° and 34.7°. Our results provided a reference for studying the multi-angle stretching of other carbon structures at various temperatures.