Organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) membranes have great potential in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries for energy-efficient molecular separation, but existing technologies often face limitations in solvent permeability and fine screening. To address these issues, we introduced a novel nanolaminate membrane assembled from single-layer two-dimensional (2D) porous silica nanosheets, in which the nanosheets themselves possess uniform in-plane pores. These silica nanosheets are synthesized via a soft method using surfactant templates.Featuring highly ordered and tunable hexagonal porosity with a thickness of less than 10 nanometers. By adjusting the carbon chain length of surfactants, silicon nanosheets with controllable pore sizes were prepared, which were then stacked into nanolaminate structures with minimized defects. The resulting membranes exhibit polarity-dependent solvent permeability, with a permeability of polar solvents reaching up to 238 L m–2 h–1 bar–1 [LMHB].Molecular sieving evaluation further demonstrated strong particle size selectivity, achieving a molecular weight cutoff as low as 678 Daltons at high solvent flux. Notably, these nanolayered silica membranes surpassed existing advanced OSN membranes in both permeability and selectivity benchmarks. Our findings highlight the potential of precisely engineered two-dimensional interlayered silica nanosheets as scalable and chemically robust building blocks for next-generation OSN membranes, tailored for advanced molecular separation applications.

Original link

Single-Layer Silica Nanosheets with In-Plane Porosity Enable High-Performance Nanolaminate Membranes for Organic Solvent Nanofiltration

Pub Date : 2025-12-16

DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5c13454

Wensen Wang,  Nadia Batool,  Mathilde Moderne,  Juan José Quintana González,  Eddy Petit,  Valérie Flaud,  William Chèvremont,  Luc Lajaunie,  Tangi Aubert ,  Damien Voiry