Observation and Analysis of Water Transport through Graphene Oxide Interlamination

Water transport inside graphene-based materials has drawn much attention nowadays because of its promising potential in ions filtration applications. Using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we investigated the mechanism of water transport inside the interlayer gallery between graphene oxide layers. The model of slipped-Poiseuille flow was cited to depict the characteristic transport of interlayer flow. This significant flow rate was related to slip velocity of water, which is constrained by hydrogen interactions between water molecules and hydroxyl groups. We find that hydrogen-bond networks are correlated with both functionalization and nanoconfinement. MD simulation results show that the slip velocity is negatively correlated with oxide concentration while independent of the array of hydroxyl groups, and the volumetric flux is linearly dependent to the slip velocity. It reveals that graphene oxide layers could get better water permeability after reduction.