Abstract
The control of ion trans-membrane transport through graphene oxide (GO) membranes is achieved by electric and magnetic fields. Electric field can either increase or decrease the ion transport through GO membranes depending on its direction, and magnetic field can enhance the ion penetration monotonically. When electric field is applied across GO membrane, excellent control of ion fluidic flows can be done. With the magnetic field, the effective anchoring of ions is demonstrated but the modulation of the ion flowing directions does not occur. The mechanism of the electro- and magneto-modulated ion trans-membrane transport is investigated, indicating that the electric fields dominate the ion migration process while the magnetic fields tune the structure of nanocapillaries within GO membranes. Results also show that the ion selectivity of GO membranes can be tuned with the electric fields while the transport of ions can be enhanced synchronously with the magnetic fields. These excellent properties make GO membranes promising in areas such as field-induced mass transport control and membrane separation.
Highlights
The control of ion trans-membrane transport through graphene oxide (GO) membranes is achieved by electric and magnetic fields
Previous experimental and theoretical results have demonstrated that unusual magnetic properties of room-temperwww.nature.com/scientificreports ature ferromagnetism along with weak antiferromagnetism[35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43] are present in defective graphene films, based on which the alteration of the structure of nanocapillaries may occur with a magnetic field across GO membranes during ion transport processes, just like the magnetic field-induced realignment of carbon nanotubes and graphene[44,45]
Conductivity variations of the drains for KCl, MgCl2 and CaCl2 are plotted in Figures S4a–c, which reveal that ion penetrations are increased gradually with the enhancement of magnetic field. These results demonstrate that the ion transport through GO membranes can be either increased or decreased with electric field, which is depended on its direction
Summary
The control of ion trans-membrane transport through graphene oxide (GO) membranes is achieved by electric and magnetic fields. The mechanism of the electro- and magneto-modulated ion trans-membrane transport is investigated, indicating that the electric fields dominate the ion migration process while the magnetic fields tune the structure of nanocapillaries within GO membranes. Results show that the ion selectivity of GO membranes can be tuned with the electric fields while the transport of ions can be enhanced synchronously with the magnetic fields These excellent properties make GO membranes promising in areas such as field-induced mass transport control and membrane separation. It has been revealed that the coordination of transition metal ions with the sp[3] matrix and the cation-p interactions of main group cations with the p clusters of GO sheets are responsible for the ion-selectivity of GO membranes[24,26] All of these characteristics make GO membranes as promising candidates in many applications, such as water purification and ion separation. The mechanism on the electro- and magneto-induced ion transport through GO membranes is discussed
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