Understanding water transport through graphene-based nanochannels via experimental control of slip length

Xinyue Wen; Tobias Foller; Xiaoheng Jin; Tiziana Musso; Priyank Kumar; Rakesh Joshi

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-33456-w

Understanding water transport through graphene-based nanochannels via experimental control of slip length

Nat Commun. 2022 Sep 28;13(1):5690. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-33456-w.

Authors

Xinyue Wen¹, Tobias Foller², Xiaoheng Jin¹, Tiziana Musso¹, Priyank Kumar³, Rakesh Joshi⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia. [email protected].
³ School of Chemical Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia. [email protected].
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia. [email protected].

Abstract

The water transport along graphene-based nanochannels has gained significant interest. However, experimental access to the influence of defects and impurities on transport poses a critical knowledge gap. Here, we investigate the water transport of cation intercalated graphene oxide membranes. The cations act as water-attracting impurities on the channel walls. Via water transport experiments, we show that the slip length of the nanochannels decay exponentially with the hydrated diameter of the intercalated cations, confirming that water transport is governed by the interaction between water molecules and the impurities on the channel wall. The exponential decay of slip length approximates non-slip conditions. This offers experimental support for the use of the Hagen-Poiseuille equation in graphene-based nanochannels, which was previously only confirmed by simulations. Our study gives valuable feedback to theoretical predictions of the water transport along graphene-based channels with water-attracting impurities.