“Nanoporous Atomically Thin Graphene Filters for Nanoscale Aerosols” published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication
About the author: Dr. Peifu Cheng is a research engineer in Dr. Piran R. Kidambi’s group in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department. He researches 2D nanomaterials (such as graphene and others) for membrane applications in ionic/molecular separation, desalination, air filtration, dialysis, among others. In the recently published work, Dr. Cheng introduced precise nanoscale pores in centimeter-scale monolayer graphene for filtrating nanoscale aerosols upto ~5nm. The works showed that graphene membranes can allow for filtrating model systems i.e. aerosolized SiO2 nanoparticles (∼5–20 nm diameter) from air steams while maintaining high air flow (∼2.3–7.1 × 10–5 mol m–2 s–1 Pa–1). Notably, a simple increase in oxygen plasma etch time allowed for tunable size-selective filtration of aerosolized nanoparticles. This work demonstrates a new route to realize ultra-compact, lightweight, and conformal form-factor aerosol filters for applications in medical research, healthcare, space, defense, and beyond.