Spotlight Publication “Scalable synthesis of nanoporous atomically thin graphene membranes for dialysis and molecular separations via facile isopropanol-assisted hot lamination” published in Nanoscale
About the author: Peifu Cheng is currently a research engineer in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering under the direction of Dr. Piran R. Kidambi. Peifu studies low-dimensional materials (such as graphene, h-BN and carbon nanotubes) based membranes for ionic/molecular separation, desalination and dialysis. In recently published work, he created a novel roll-to-roll manufacturing compatible isopropanol-assisted hot lamination method that enables facile, clean and scalable transfer of large-area graphene onto polycarbonate track etched (PCTE) with coverage ≥99.2% without compromising the porosity/integrity of support, which represents the best value reported for centimeter-scale graphene membranes. He further demonstrated fully functional centimeter-scale nanoporous atomically thin graphene membranes that showed record high permeance (∼2–3 orders of magnitude higher) and better selectivity than commercially available state-of-the-art polymeric dialysis membranes. This work paves the way for the utilization of large-area graphene membranes in the fields of dialysis, molecular separations, ionic/molecular transport, and beyond.