Freestanding bacterial cellulose-graphene oxide composite membranes with high mechanical strength for selective ion permeation

Graphene oxide (GO) based membranes have been widely applied in molecular separation based on the size exclusion effect of the nanochannels formed by stacked GO sheets. However, it’s still a challenge to prepare a freestanding GO-based membrane with high mechanical strength and structural stability which is prerequisite for separation application in aqueous solution. Here, a freestanding composite membrane based on bacterial cellulose (BC) and GO is designed and prepared. BC network provides a porous skeleton to spread GO sheets and uniformly incorporates into the GO layers, which endows the BC + GO composite membrane with well water-stability, excellent tensile strength, as well as improved toughness, guaranteeing its separation applicability in water environment. The resulting BC + GO membrane exhibits obviously discrepant permeation properties for different inorganic/organic ions with different size, and in particular, it can quickly separate ions in nano-scale from angstrom-scale. Therefore, this novel composite membrane is considered to be a promising candidate in the applications of water purification, food industry, biomedicine, and pharmaceutical and fuel separation.