Much has been made of graphene's exceptional qualities, from its ability to conduct heat and electricity better than any other material to its unparalleled（无比的） strength: Worked into a composite material, graphene can repel¹ bullets better than Kevlar. Previous research has also shown that pristine²（原始的） graphene -- a microscopic³ sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern -- is among the most impermeable⁴ materials ever discovered, making the substance ideal as a barrier film. But the material may not be as impenetrable as scientists have thought. By engineering relatively⁵ large membranes⁷ from single sheets of graphene grown by chemical vapor⁸ deposition⁹, researchers from MIT, Oak Ridge¹⁰ National Laboratory (ORNL) and elsewhere have found that the material bears intrinsic defects, or holes in its atom-sized armor. In experiments, the researchers found that small molecules¹¹ like salts passed easily through a graphene membrane⁶'s tiny pores, while larger molecules were unable to penetrate¹².

 

The results, the researchers say, point not to a flaw in graphene, but to the possibility of promising¹³ applications, such as membranes that filter microscopic contaminants from water, or that separate specific types of molecules from biological samples.

 

"No one has looked for holes in graphene before," says Rohit Karnik, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. "There's a lot of chemical methods that can be used to modify these pores, so it's a platform technology for a new class of membranes."

 

Karnik and his colleagues, including researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology and King Fahd University of Petroleum¹⁴ and Minerals, have published their results in the journal ACS Nano.

 

Karnik worked with MIT graduate student Sean O'Hern to look for materials "that could lead to not just incremental¹⁵ changes, but substantial leaps in terms of the way membranes perform." In particular, the team cast around for materials with two key attributes, high flux¹⁶ and tunability: that is, membranes that quickly filter fluids, but are also easily tailored to let certain molecules through while trapping others. The group settled on graphene, in part because of its extremely thin structure and its strength: A sheet of graphene is as thin as a single atom, but strong enough to let high volumes of fluids through without shredding¹⁷ apart.

 

The team set out to engineer a membrane spanning 25 square millimeters -- a surface area that is large by graphene standards, holding about a quadrillion carbon atoms. They used graphene synthesized by chemical vapor deposition, borrowing on expertise¹⁸ from the research group of Jing Kong, the ITT Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. The team then developed techniques to transfer the graphene sheet to a polycarbonate（聚碳酸酯） substrate dotted with holes.

 

Once the researchers successfully transferred the graphene, they began to experiment with the resulting membrane, exposing it to flowing water containing molecules of varying sizes. They theorized that if graphene were indeed impermeable, the molecules would be blocked from flowing across. However, experiments showed otherwise, as researchers observed salts flowing through the membrane.

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