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Water desalination using nanoporous single-layer graphene

Nature Nanotechnology volume 10, pages 459–464 (2015)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 08 November 2016

This article has been updated

Abstract

By creating nanoscale pores in a layer of graphene, it could be used as an effective separation membrane due to its chemical and mechanical stability, its flexibility and, most importantly, its one-atom thickness. Theoretical studies have indicated that the performance of such membranes should be superior to state-of-the-art polymer-based filtration membranes, and experimental studies have recently begun to explore their potential. Here, we show that single-layer porous graphene can be used as a desalination membrane. Nanometre-sized pores are created in a graphene monolayer using an oxygen plasma etching process, which allows the size of the pores to be tuned. The resulting membranes exhibit a salt rejection rate of nearly 100% and rapid water transport. In particular, water fluxes of up to 106 g m−2 s−1 at 40 °C were measured using pressure difference as a driving force, while water fluxes measured using osmotic pressure as a driving force did not exceed 70 g m−2 s−1 atm−1.

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Figure 1: Porous graphene membranes.
Figure 2: Water transport measurements and desalination experiments.
Figure 3: Characterization of nanoporous graphene.

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Change history

  • 14 October 2016

    In the version of this Article originally published, the water flux calculated from simulations in ref. 28 was incorrectly stated as 1.7 × 10−12 g s−1 bar−1 per pore; the correct value is 1.7 × 10−15 g s−1 bar−1 per pore. Sentences in the main text related to this value and the comparison to experimental results have been amended. This does not change the experimental results or conclusions. This error has been corrected in the online versions of the Article.

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Acknowledgements

Research sponsored by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the US Department of Energy. Research also supported through a user proposal at ORNL's Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS), which is a US Department of Energy, Office of Science User Facility.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chemical Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, 37831, Tennessee, USA

    Sumedh P. Surwade, Sheng Dai & Shannon M. Mahurin

  2. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, 88003, New Mexico, USA

    Sergei N. Smirnov

  3. Energy and Transportation Science, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, 37831, Tennessee, USA

    Ivan V. Vlassiouk

  4. Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, 37831, Tennessee, USA

    Raymond R. Unocic

  5. Materials Science & Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, 37831, Tennessee, USA

    Gabriel M. Veith

  6. Department of Chemistry, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 37996, Tennessee, USA

    Sheng Dai

Authors
  1. Sumedh P. Surwade
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  2. Sergei N. Smirnov
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  3. Ivan V. Vlassiouk
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  4. Raymond R. Unocic
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  7. Shannon M. Mahurin
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Contributions

S.P.S. performed water transport experiments and plasma treatment. I.V.V. performed membrane preparation and ionic transport measurements. R.R.U. performed the aberration-corrected STEM. G.M.V. performed X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements and analysed the results. S.M.M., I.V.V. and S.D. conceived the idea and designed the experiments. I.V.V., S.M.M., S.P.S., S.N.S. and S.D. analysed the data and interpreted the results. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ivan V. Vlassiouk or Shannon M. Mahurin.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Surwade, S., Smirnov, S., Vlassiouk, I. et al. Water desalination using nanoporous single-layer graphene. Nature Nanotech 10, 459–464 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.37

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