(381au) Tailoring Molecular Architecture of Heterogeneous Nanostructure for High CO2 Separation Performance

Graphene Oxide (GO) has been extensively studied as a membrane materials for CO₂ separation due to its high CO₂-philic property. Although GO membrane is considered as one of promising membrane, it has a limitation to apply for practical application because of long diffusional pathway because of its two-dimensional structure. Graphene Oxide (GO) has been extensively studied as a membrane materials for CO₂ separation due to its high CO₂-philic property. Although GO membrane is considered as one of promising membrane, it has a limitation to apply for practical application because of long diffusional pathway because of its two-dimensional structure. In general, gas molecules are penetrated along the GO layers, which lead to increase of diffusional pathway and resistance to oxygen functional groups on the basal plane of GO. As such, in this study, we modified GO to improve its performances by adjusting the architecture of GO using various methods as follows; 1) precise control of sp²-graphitic regions and sp³-oxidized regions without any chemicals, and 2) creating and decorating pores on GO sheets. By using these modification methods, we controlled interface resistance and diffusional pathways between GO layers. Both CO₂ permeability and CO₂/N₂ selectivity were increased by redesigning the structure. These results have the potential to open up new approaches for an improvement in the transport properties of two-dimensional membrane materials for use in next-generation membrane applications.