Broadening the gas separation utility of monolayer nanoporous graphene membranes by an ionic liquid gating

Wei Guo, Shannon M. Mahurin, Raymond R. Unocic, Huimin Luo, Sheng Dai

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

50 Scopus citations

Abstract

Ultrathin two-dimensional (2D) monolayer atomic crystal materials offer great potential for extending the field of novel separation technology due to their infinitesimal thickness and mechanical strength. One difficult and ongoing challenge is to perforate the 2D monolayer material with subnanometer pores with atomic precision for sieving similarly sized molecules. Here, we demonstrate the exceptional separation performance of ionic liquid (IL)/graphene hybrid membranes for challenging separation of CO2 and N2. Notably, the ultrathin ILs afford dynamic tuning of the size and chemical affinity of nanopores while preserving the high permeance of the monolayer nanoporous graphene membranes. The hybrid membrane yields a high CO2 permeance of 4000 GPU and an outstanding CO2/N2 selectivity up to 32. This rational hybrid design provides a universal direction for broadening gas separation capability of atomically thin nanoporous membranes.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)7995-8000
Number of pages6
JournalNano Letters
Volume20
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 11 2020

Funding

This research was supported financially by the Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC05-00OR22725. A portion of this research was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

Keywords

  • Gas separation
  • Ionic liquid
  • Nanoporous graphene
  • Ultrathin membrane

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