Projects per year
Abstract
The rejection of particles with different charges and sizes, ranging from a few Ångstroms to tens of nanometers, is key to a wide range of industrial applications, from wastewater treatment to product purification in biotech processes. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have long held the promise to revolutionize filtration, with orders of magnitude higher fluxes compared to commercial membranes. CNTs, however, can only reject particles and ions wider than their internal diameter. In this work, the fabrication of aligned boron nitride nanotube (BNNT) membranes capable of rejecting nanoparticles smaller than their internal diameter is reported for the first time. This is due to a mechanism of charge-based rejection in addition to the size-based one, enabled by the BNNTs surface structure and chemistry and elucidated here using high fidelity molecular dynamics and Brownian dynamics simulations. This results in ∼40% higher rejection of the same particles by BNNT membranes than CNT ones with comparable nanotube diameter. Furthermore, since permeance is proportional to the square of the nanotubes' diameter, using BNNT membranes with ∼30% larger nanotube diameter than a CNT membrane with comparable rejection would result in up to 70% higher permeance. These results open the way to the design of more effective nanotube membranes, capable of high particle rejection and, at the same time, high water permeance.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 21138-21145 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Nanoscale |
Volume | 12 |
Issue number | 41 |
Early online date | 9 Jul 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 7 Nov 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by the UK EPSRC (grants EP/M01486X/1, EP/N016602/1 and EP/R007438/1). The MD simulation results were obtained using ARCHER, the UK's national supercomputer. We acknowledge Diamond Light Source for time on Instrument E01 under Proposal EM21253 and Dr Mohsen Danaie for support. XPS data collection was performed at the EPSRC National Facility for XPS ('HarwellXPS'), operated by Cardiff University and UCL, under contract no. PR16195. We deeply thank Dr Daniel Wolverson for allowing us the use of his Raman spectroscopy setup. SC thanks Dr Salvador Eslava for providing hematite nanoparticles and Dr Jing Ji for her helpful remarks. All raw data produced in the manuscript can be found in the ESI.
Funding Information:
This research was supported by the UK EPSRC (grants EP/ M01486X/1, EP/N016602/1 and EP/R007438/1). The MD simulation results were obtained using ARCHER, the UK’s national supercomputer. We acknowledge Diamond Light Source for time on Instrument E01 under Proposal EM21253 and Dr Mohsen Danaie for support. XPS data collection was performed at the EPSRC National Facility for XPS (‘HarwellXPS’), operated by Cardiff University and UCL, under contract no. PR16195. We deeply thank Dr Daniel Wolverson for allowing us the use of his Raman spectroscopy setup. SC thanks Dr Salvador Eslava for providing hematite nanoparticles and Dr Jing Ji for her helpful remarks. All raw data produced in the manuscript can be found in the ESI.†
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Royal Society of Chemistry.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Materials Science
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Enhanced nanoparticle rejection in aligned boron nitride nanotube membranes'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 2 Finished
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SynFabFun - From Membrane Material Synthesis to Fabrication and Function
Chew, J. (CoI)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
1/04/15 → 30/09/20
Project: Research council
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SynFabFun - From Membrane Material Synthesis to Fabrication and Function
Mattia, D. (PI) & Chew, J. (CoI)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
1/04/15 → 30/06/21
Project: Research council
Equipment
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Raman confocal microscope RENISHAM INVIA
Material and Chemical Characterisation (MC2)Facility/equipment: Equipment