Pressure-driven ultrafiltration membranes are important in separation applications. Advanced filtration membranes with high permeance and enhanced rejection must be developed to meet rising worldwide demand. Here we report nanostrand-channelled graphene oxide ultrafiltration membranes with a network of nanochannels with a narrow size distribution (3-5 nm) and superior separation performance. This permeance offers a 10-fold enhancement without sacrificing the rejection rate compared with that of graphene oxide membranes, and is more than 100 times higher than that of commercial ultrafiltration membranes with similar rejection. The flow enhancement is attributed to the porous structure and significantly reduced channel length. An abnormal pressure-dependent separation behaviour is also reported, where the elastic deformation of nanochannels offers tunable permeation and rejection. The water flow through these hydrophilic graphene oxide nanochannels is identified as viscous. This nanostrand-channelling approach is also extendable to other laminate membranes, providing potential for accelerating separation and water-purification processes.

The emergence of Turing structures is of fundamental importance, and designing these structures and developing their applications have practical effects in chemistry and biology. We use a facile route based on interfacial polymerization to generate Turing-type polyamide membranes for water purification. Manipulation of shapes by control of reaction conditions enabled the creation of membranes with bubble or tube structures. These membranes exhibit excellent water-salt separation performance that surpasses the upper-bound line of traditional desalination membranes. Furthermore, we show the existence of high water permeability sites in the Turing structures, where water transport through the membranes is enhanced.

Water transport through graphene-derived membranes has gained much interest recently due to its promising potential in filtration and separation applications. In this work, we explore water permeation in graphene oxide membranes using atomistic simulations and theoretical analysis, by considering flow through the interlayer gallery, expanded channels such as wrinkles of interedge spaces, and pores within the sheet. We find that, although flow enhancement can be established by nanoconfinement, fast water transport through pristine graphene channels is prohibited by a prominent side-pinning effect from capillaries formed within oxidized regions. We then discuss several flow enhancement mechanisms through the porous microstructures of graphene oxide membranes. These understandings are integrated into a complete picture to understand water permeation through the layer-by-layer and porous microstructure and can guide rational design of functional membranes for energy and environmental applications.

Two dimensional (2-D) Ti3C2Tx nanosheets are obtained by etching bulk Ti3C2Tx powders in HF solution and delaminating ultrasonically, which exhibit excellent removal capacity for toxic Cr(VI) from water, due to their high surface area, well dispersibility, and reductivity. The Ti3C2Tx nanosheets delaminated by 10% HF solution present more efficient Cr(VI) removal performance with capacity of 250 mg g(-1), and the residual concentration of Cr(VI) in treated water is less than 5 ppb, far below the concentration (0.05 ppm) of Cr(VI) in the drinking water standard recommended by the World Health Organization. This kind of 2-D Ti3C2Tx nanosheet can not only remove Cr(VI) rapidly and effectively in one step from aqueous solution by reducing Cr(VI) to Cr(III) but also adsorb the reduced Cr(III) simultaneously. Furthermore, these reductive 2-D Ti3C2Tx nanosheets are generally explored to remove other oxidant agents, such as K3[Fe(CN)6], KMnO4, and NaAuCl4 solutions, by converting them to low oxidation states. These significantly expand the potential applications of 2-D Ti3C2Tx nanosheets in water treatment.

Chemical, petrochemical, energy, and environment-related industries strongly require high-performance nanofiltration membranes applicable to organic solvents. To achieve high solvent permeability, filtration membranes must be as thin as possible, while retaining mechanical strength and solvent resistance. Here, we report on the preparation of ultrathin free-standing amorphous carbon membranes with Young's moduli of 90 to 170 gigapascals. The membranes can separate organic dyes at a rate three orders of magnitude greater than that of commercially available membranes. Permeation experiments revealed that the hard carbon layer has hydrophobic pores of ~1 nanometer, which allow the ultrafast viscous permeation of organic solvents through the membrane.

Pressure-driven filtration by porous membranes is widely used in the production of drinking water from ground and surface water. Permeation theory predicts that filtration rate is proportional to the pressure difference across the filtration membrane and inversely proportional to the thickness of the membrane. However, these membranes need to be able to withstand high water fluxes and pressures, which means that the active separation layers in commercial filtration systems typically have a thickness of a few tens to several hundreds of nanometres. Filtration performance might be improved by the use of ultrathin porous silicon membranes or carbon nanotubes immobilized in silicon nitride or polymer films, but these structures are difficult to fabricate. Here, we report a new type of filtration membrane made of crosslinked proteins that are mechanically robust and contain channels with diameters of less than 2.2 nm. We find that a 60-nm-thick membrane can concentrate aqueous dyes from fluxes up to 9,000 l h(-1) m(-2) bar(-1), which is approximately 1,000 times higher than the fluxes that can be withstood by commercial filtration membranes with similar rejection properties. Based on these results and molecular dynamics simulations, we propose that protein-surrounded channels with effective lengths of less than 5.8 nm can separate dye molecules while allowing the ultrafast permeation of water at applied pressures of less than 1 bar.

Lithium–sulfur batteries are promising technologies for powering flexible devices due to their high energy density, low cost and environmental friendliness, when the insulating nature, shuttle effect and volume expansion of sulfur electrodes are well addressed. Here, we report a strategy of using foldable interpenetrated metal-organic frameworks/carbon nanotubes thin film for binder-free advanced lithium–sulfur batteries through a facile confinement conversion. The carbon nanotubes interpenetrate through the metal-organic frameworks crystal and interweave the electrode into a stratified structure to provide both conductivity and structural integrity, while the highly porous metal-organic frameworks endow the electrode with strong sulfur confinement to achieve good cyclability. These hierarchical porous interpenetrated three-dimensional conductive networks with well confined S8 lead to high sulfur loading and utilization, as well as high volumetric energy density.

For the first time, pressure, salt concentration and pH demonstrated advantages for tuning the nanochannels within lamellar graphene oxide (LGO) membranes to control the separation of small molecules. This provides a new avenue for designing and engineering efficient LGO membranes for molecular separation.