With climate change and population growth, securing water resources has become one of the greatest challenges of the coming decades. To meet the growing demand, water must now be recovered and purified. In this context, the development of membranes with higher selectivity and permeation rate should reduce the energy footprint of water recovery and desalination and would have a significant societal and industrial impact. Two-dimensional (2D) materials, with atomic thickness and large lateral dimensions, can be considered as ultimate membranes, but their use as monolayer membranes remains limited. Thanks to the obtained interlayer space, nanolaminate membranes made of re-stacked nanosheets could theoretically lead to better separation performances. During my talk, I will present the state of the art in the field of membranes based on 2D materials and introduce the associated fundamental concepts¹. I will then describe my research that aims at using 2D materials as building blocks for the preparation of membranes. In particular, we will examine the role of nanosheet surface chemistry and stacking defects on membrane properties^2,3.

References :

1. Peng, H. et al. Transition metal dichalcogenide-based functional membrane: Synthesis, modification, and water purification applications. Matter 6, 59–96 (2023).
2. Ries, L. et al. Enhanced sieving from exfoliated MoS 2 membranes via covalent functionalization. Nature Materials 18, 1112–1117 (2019).
3. Wang, W. et al. High Surface Area Functionalized Nanolaminated Membranes For Energy Efficient Nanofiltration And Desalination In Forward Osmosis. (2022).