The intrinsic defects in reduced graphene oxide (rGO) formed during reduction processes can act as nanopores, making rGO a promising ultrathin-film membrane candidate for separations. To assess the potential of rGO for such applications, molecular dynamics techniques are employed to understand the defect formation in rGO and their separation performance in water desalination and natural gas purification. We establish the relationship between rGO synthesis parameters and defect sizes, resulting in a potential means to control the size of nanopores in rGO. Furthermore, our results show that rGO membranes obtained under properly chosen synthesis conditions can achieve effective separations and provide significantly higher permeate fluxes than currently available membranes.

Nature Communications 6, Article number: 8335 doi:10.1038/ncomms9335
Received 27 April 2015 Accepted 11 August 2015 Published 23 September 2015

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150923/ncomms9335/full/ncomms9335.html