Top-down synthesis nanosieve graphene by light

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Graphene is a promising building block to be considered in various membrane architectures due to its controllable sheet thicknesses, lateral sizes, and surface area ranges. Membrane architecture based on assembled graphene can generate tight tortuous pathways between graphitic planes. However, the control of the dimension of such horizontal-aligned diffusion nanochannels is highly required to increase the membrane applicability beyond the water treatment and enable fast mas transport toward high-permeability membranes. Attempts to engineer the assembly process and hence control the interlayer spacing size have been considered, but they typically result in modified membranes with less controlled microstructural morphology. Among graphene derivatives, nanoporous graphene is a mesh architecture with size-controlled in-plane pores ranging from sub-nanometre to a few nanometres, and tuneable surface densities are achievable by various perforation technologies. However, the state-of-art of nano-perforation methodologies may have struggled to deliver a membrane for practical use due to a lack of scalability and increased related complexity/costs over commercial membranes. This study comes as a necessary step to fabricate ultrathin nanoporous membranes relying on low-cost graphene nanomaterials powered with porosity features. Moreover, the benefits afforded by the current findings are critical steps to address a few challenges in membrane science nowadays and may open avenues for graphene-based membranes into various applications

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