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Random interstratification in hydrated graphene oxide membranes and implications for seawater desalination

Nature Nanotechnology volume 17, pages 131–133 (2022)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 20 January 2022

The Original Article was published on 03 April 2017

arising from J. Abraham et al. Nature Nanotechnology https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2017.21 (2022)

The study by Abraham et al.1 suggested the control of lattice expansion in graphene oxide (GO) membranes by a change of humidity. The study claimed to control the changes in the size of ‘permeation channels’ as small as 1 Å, which is significantly smaller than the size of the water molecule used to expand the lattice. However, diffusion of salts along the GO membranes was observed for all the samples encapsulated into epoxy glue at different humidity levels (12–100%), thus providing no advantages for water desalination. A high permeation rate for Li, K and Na ions was named as surprising, but it is naturally explained using the well-known mechanism of GO swelling in water. Abraham et al.1 incorrectly equalized the change in d(001) value of GO found by X-ray diffraction (XRD) with an increment in the size of uniformly sized permeation channels. However, the true GO lattice expansion is expected to correspond to the size of the intercalate molecule (water), whereas the gradual shift of the d(001) reflection is the result of averaging over differently hydrated layers and regions related to the effects of random interstratification. An epoxy glue envelope was proposed as a method to prevent GO lattice expansion in a salt solution. However, no in situ characterization (for example, by XRD) was presented to support the claim that the swelling of glue-encapsulated GO membranes in salt solutions was limited to the value provided by humidity at the moment of encapsulation. Moreover, a possible chemical modification of the GO structure with amine-containing glue was not ruled out. In fact, water desalination using GO membranes was demonstrated back in 1970 using clay-encapsulated GO membranes and a rather common reverse osmosis method2. That is, without involving a new exotic mechanism of desalination. In later years, studies of GO membranes were largely abandoned due to the detrimental performance compared with those of inexpensive and mechanically more stable membranes (for example, acetylated cellulose in the 1970s) widely implemented for industrial water desalination.

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  1. Department of Physics, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Alexandr V. Talyzin

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Talyzin, A.V. Random interstratification in hydrated graphene oxide membranes and implications for seawater desalination. Nat. Nanotechnol. 17, 131–133 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-021-01066-0

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