Designing an All-Carbon Membrane for Water Desalination

Potable water, while key to human survival, is relatively scarce. Seawater is plentiful, but its desalination by reverse osmosis requires membranes that pass water molecules, but reject ions and debris. The performance of current polymer membranes is limited by insufficiency in selective ion rejection, mechanical strength, thermal stability, resilience to cleaning agents, and electrical conductance. The authors' atomistic computational design of a membrane with layers of graphite oxide, carbon nanotubes, and carbon-based fabric addresses all of those limitations and promises significant performance improvement at low cost, through its microscopic insight into the desalination process.