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Transport of ionic solutions through graphene oxide (GO) membranes is a complicated issue because the complex and tortuous structure inside makes it very hard to clarify. Using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we investigated the mechanism of water transport and ion movement across multilayer GO. The significant flow rate is considerably influenced by the structural parameters of GO membranes. Because of the size effect on a shrunken real flow area, there is disagreement between the classical continuum model and nanoscaled flow. To eliminate the variance, we obtained modified geometrical parameters from density analysis and used them in the developed hydrodynamic model to give a precise depiction of water flow. Four kinds of solutions (i.e., NaCl, KCl, MgCl, and CaCl) and different configurational GO sheets were considered to clarify the influence on salt permeation. It is found that the abilities of permeation to ions are not totally up to the hydration radius. Even though the ionic hydration shell is greater than the opening space, the ions can also pass through the split because of the special double-deck hydration structure. In the structure of GO, a smaller layer separation with greater offsetting gaps could substantially enhance the membrane's ability to reject salt. This work establishes molecular insight into the effects of configurational structures and salt species on desalination performance, providing useful guidelines for the design of multilayer GO membranes.

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Water transport inside graphene-based materials has drawn much attention nowadays because of its promising potential in ions filtration applications. Using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we investigated the mechanism of water transport inside the interlayer gallery between graphene oxide layers. The model of slipped-Poiseuille flow was cited to depict the characteristic transport of interlayer flow. This significant flow rate was related to slip velocity of water, which is constrained by hydrogen interactions between water molecules and hydroxyl groups. We find that hydrogen-bond networks are correlated with both functionalization and nanoconfinement. MD simulation results show that the slip velocity is negatively correlated with oxide concentration while independent of the array of hydroxyl groups, and the volumetric flux is linearly dependent to the slip velocity. It reveals that graphene oxide layers could get better water permeability after reduction.

A lightweight, flexible, and highly efficient energy management strategy is highly desirable for flexible electronic devices to meet a rapidly growing demand. Herein, Ni–Co–S nanosheet array is successfully deposited on graphene foam (Ni–Co–S/GF) by a one‐step electrochemical method. The Ni–Co–S/GF composed of Ni–Co–S nanosheet array which is vertically aligned to GF and provides a large interfacial area for redox reactions with optimum interstitials facilitates the ions diffusion. The Ni–Co–S/GF electrodes have high specific capacitance values of 2918 and 2364 F g−1 at current densities of 1 and 20 A g−1, respectively. Using such hierarchical Ni–Co–S/GF as the cathode, a flexible asymmetric supercapacitor (ASC) is further fabricated with polypyrrple(PPy)/GF as the anode. The flexible asymmetric supercapacitors have maximum operation potential window of 1.65 V, and energy densities of 79.3 and 37.7 Wh kg−1 when the power densities are 825.0 and 16100 W kg−1, respectively. It's worth nothing that the ASC cells have robust flexibility with performance well maintained when the devices were bent to different angles from 180° to 15° at a duration of 5 min. The efficient electrochemical deposition method of Ni–Co–S with a preferred orientation of nanosheet arrays is applicable for the flexible energy storage devices.