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Chementator Briefs

| By Edited by Gerald Ondrey

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Desalination membrane

Professor Matsuyama Hideto’s research group at Kobe University’s (Japan; www.kobe-u.ac.jp) Research Center for Membrane and Film Technology has developed a new, ultrathin desalination membrane that rejects 95% of sodium chloride permeation. The membrane is made by laminating graphene-oxide nanosheets onto the surface of a porous polymer membrane. The graphene oxide is chemically reduced with L-ascorbic acid and ammonia to impart strengthened π-π interaction. By applying nanosheet coatings with intercalation of porphyrin-based planar molecules (with charged groups and a conjugated π system) to the surface of a porous membrane, the research group was able to construct an ultrathin (50 nm) desalination membrane layer. This layer demonstrated high ion-blocking functionality because the size of the nanochannels could be controlled within 1 nm.

The study was published recently in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.

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