Patent Application: US-201314401799-A

Abstract:
the present invention relates to a material . in particular , it relates to a membrane for filtering water . more particularly , it relates to a membrane comprising carbon nanotubes and mixed cellulose ester porous membranes for water desalination and purification . still more particular , the membrane comprising a fibrous substrate and carbon nanotubes formed on a fibrous substrate , wherein the surface of the carbon nanotubes is functionally modified . a microfluidic device comprising such a membrane and a method for filtering water are also disclosed .

Description:
in order that the present invention may be fully understood and readily put into practical effect , there shall now be described by way of non - limitative examples only preferred embodiments of the present invention , the description being with reference to the accompanying illustrative figures . vertically - aligned , ultralong carbon nanotubes ( ucnts ) were synthesized by water - assisted chemical vapour deposition process as reported previously 26 , 27 . briefly , a 0 . 5 nm thick fe catalyst film was deposited on n - type si substrate coated with al 2 o 3 and sio 2 interlayers with a thickness of 10 and 100 nm respectively . the catalyst was then loaded into a 2 ″ quartz tube of a thermal furnace ( mti ; otf - 1200 ×). the catalyst was then annealed to 750 ° c . under an ar / h 2 ( 900 / 600 sccm ) mixture at the atmospheric pressure . the growth of cnts was started by introducing c 2 h 4 at a flow rate of 600 sccm and a trace amount of water . after typically 10 min , the growth was terminated and the furnace was cooled down to room temperature . ucnts with an average of 5 - 10 walls and a height of 100 - 200 μm were obtained ( see fig1 ). a photo of the dense black color cnt arrays removed from the growth substrate is shown in fig1 b . sem images of the aligned , high density ucnt arrays are also shown in fig1 c and d . to fabricate the membranes , the vertically aligned ucnts were removed from the silicon substrate and dispersed in 1 wt % sodium dodecyl sulphate ( sds ) solution . the same procedures were applied to fabricate ucnt - and short mwcnt - based membranes ( the short mwcnts were purchased from plasmachem gmbh ). the solution was sonicated for 30 min using a tip - sonicator ( sonics vcx1f30 ) to yield a stable and uniformly dispersed ucnt ink . the ucnt ink was then deposited onto the commercially - available mixed cellulose ester ( mce ) porous membranes ( millipore gswp04700 ) by vacuum filtration 30 . vacuum filtration technique ( fig2 a ) was then used to fabricate the membranes by adding 40 ml of ucnt solution ( or 10 ml of the mwcnt solution as the concentration was higher ) to the 47 mm mce membrane ( fig2 b and c ), with carefully avoiding any bubbles . it should be noted that the porous size of the membranes is large (& gt ; 100 nm ) so that it will not affect the filtration process . the as - prepared membrane was then dried and cut into 1 × 1 cm 2 size for water desalination and purification . it is possible to scale up if the ucnts - mce composites are connected in a matrix format so that the surface area can be increased to a larger value . as control sample , the pure mce membrane was also integrated into the micro - channel devices . no desalination function was observed , as shown by the invariant conductivity curves ( fig2 d ). the residual surfactant in the ucnt - mce membrane was removed by filtering with copious tap water . after drying completely in a vacuum oven , the ucnt - mce membrane was weighed by a balance ( sensitivity ˜ 0 . 01 mg ; mettier h20t ) and the density of cnts on the membrane was estimated (˜ 8 μg / cm 2 ; equivalent to a volume density of 0 . 8 g / cm 3 ). the porosity was therefore ˜ 60 % by assuming that the density of bulk cnts is 1 . 4 g / cm 3 . further microscopic images indicated that the homogeneous cnt film conformed well to the mce membrane with a thickness of ˜ 0 . 5 μm ( see fig8 ). both acid - and plasma - modification were conducted to functionalize the ucnt - based membranes . for acid modification , the membranes were immersed into 5n hno 3 , refluxed for 2 h , and then washed with de - ionised water . for plasma modification , the membranes were placed in a plasma chamber with a “ remote ” inductively - coupled plasma ( icp ) configuration ( see fig3 ). the distance between the plasma source and the membranes was about 40 cm . the plasma was generated by a radio - frequency ( rf ) power operated at frequency of 13 . 56 mhz and power of 600 w , with 40 sccm ar gas at a pressure of 2 pa . the distance between the center of the plasma and the ucnt - mce membranes was ˜ 40 cm . the modification time lasted for 5 and 10 min respectively . fig3 b and c show the sem images of the pristine and 10 min plasma modified ucnt - mce membranes respectively . it is noted that there is no broken of ucnts except the surface roughness has been changed . for acid modification , the membranes were immersed in 5n hno 3 , refluxed for 2 h , and then washed with de - ionised water . sem image of the acid modified membrane is showed in fig3 d . xps analyses indicated that oxygen - containing functional groups ( such as c ═ o and c — o bonds ) were introduced onto the graphitic walls of ucnts after both plasma and acid modifications . however , the portion of these functional groups were more prominent on plasma modified samples ( fig4 ). table 1 below shows all the samples used in the present invention . we compared the performance of ucnt - based with the short mwcnt - based membranes in the present experiments ( table 1 ). according to the manufacturer &# 39 ; s specifications , these mwcnts have a length of 1 - 10 μm diameter of 5 - 20 nm , and a wall number of 3 - 15 . after fabricating the mwcnt - mce membranes , the same plasma modification procedure was implemented . we found that , contrary to the ucnts , the raman and xps spectra indicated that plasma modification induced less effect on these mwcnts ( fig6 and 7 ). this is probably due to that the mwcnts already had a high portion of amorphous carbon and defective graphitic structure at their pristine state . while plasma can functionalize the graphitic walls , it can also etch away these amorphous structures and result in a cleaner surface . we also examined the cross - sectional sem images of both ucnt - mce and mwcnt - mce membranes ( fig8 ). it was found that densely - packed , uniform structures were formed on the ucnt layer , while relatively sparse and loose structures were formed on the short mwcnt layer . the degree of van der waal &# 39 ; s interactions may cause such morphological difference in long ucnts and short mwcnts . it was noted that plasma treatment did not damage both ucnt - and nwcnt - based membrane structures . the polydimethylsiloxane ( pdms ) was used to fabricate the microfluidic channel devices . the external flow rate was generated with a syringe pump ( harvard apparatus , phd 2200 ). all flow patterns and particle motions were imaged with an inverted fluorescence microscope ( olympus , ix - 51 ). an ac power supply was used to apply an electric potential to the stream of the outlet of the device and the current - voltage ( i - v ) characteristics were measured using keithley 2400 electrometer with two ag / agcl microelectrodes . fig5 shows the tem images of 10 min plasma modified samples after the desalination experiment , where nacl nanocrystals embedded in the ucnt networks can be clearly identified . furthermore , na ion has the smallest dimension ( from the periodic table ) when compared to mg , ca , pb etc . it is therefore reasonable to believe that the proposed ucnts devices are capable to remove these metal ions . the removing of other ions are under study . to test the desalination performance of membranes , the micro - channel device as shown in fig9 f was used . first , the ucnt - mce membranes were cut into small pieces with an area of 1 × 1 cm 2 . two identical pieces were then pressed face - to - face in the micro - channel device . the entire micro - channel device , connecting tubing , and a pre - calibrated microfluidic conductivity measurement device comprising the fixed channel geometry ( volume ˜ 100 μl ) and the embedded ag / agcl electrodes were first filled with the nacl solution . the microfluidic device was then opened and the ucnt membrane was loaded into the device . the nacl solution was then pumped through the device by a syringe pump ( harvard apparatus , phd 2200 ) at a flow rate of 10 μl / min . after allowing for 140 μl of the volume to flow ( corresponding to the dead volume in the system ), the conductivity of the outlet was monitored by measuring the conductance of the microfluidic device . no membrane clogging was found throughout the desalination operations . for the purification of rhodamine - dextran ( rd ) molecules , 2 . 5 mg / ml solution was prepared in deionized water and the ph of the solution was adjusted to 7 ( neutral ) or 4 ( anionic ) respectively . the entire system was first filled with the rd solution , and a fresh ucnt membrane was loaded into the device . the rd solution was then flowed through the membrane at a flow rate of 10 μl / min . every 10 min , 100 - μl aliquots were collected in a vial and were analyzed by a uv - vis spectrophotometer . for the filtration of gold nanoparticles , solutions of gold nanoparticles with a diameter of 5 nm ( 5 . 47 × 10 13 nanoparticles / ml ) and a diameter of 10 nm ( 50 . 98 × 10 12 nanoparticles / ml ) were used in the micro - channel device , and the same procedure as that for rd was followed . finally , to measure the adsorption capacity of the membranes in static salt water , two identical samples of each membrane ( 1 × 1 cm 2 ) were immersed into 1 ml of salt water at a concentration of 0 . 02 m ( inset of fig1 a ). the corresponding conductivities were then monitored every 30 min by an electrometer . ucnts were synthesized by a water - assisted chemical vapor deposition ( wa - cvd ) process 28 , 29 . scanning electron microscopy ( sem ) and transmission electron microscopy ( tem ) images indicated that these ucnts had a vertically - aligned , closely packed structure with a height of 100 - 200 μm , a diameter of 5 - 20 nm , and a typical wall number of 5 - 10 ( fig9 a and fig1 ). the ucnts were then removed from the growth substrate and sonicated in an aqueous solution with a surfactant ( sodium dodecyl sulfate , sds ) to form the cnt ink . membranes based on these ucnts were fabricated by vacuum filtration technique 30 , where a conformal thin layer of ucnts was deposited on the porous mce support ( pore size of ˜ 220 nm ; fig9 b ). the resultant ucnt - based membranes were mechanically robust and could be bent at an angle of 90 ° or more than 20 times without damage or loss of structural integrity ( fig9 c ). fig9 d shows the cross - sectional images of the membrane , where a ˜ 0 . 5 μm thick ucnt layer wrapping around the pores of the mce support is clearly observed . the ucnt layer features a highly - porous structure (˜ 60 % porosity ; fig2 and 3 ), which is desirable for effective water flow . the membrane was then incorporated into a micro - channel device consisting of two identical membranes pressed together face - to - face to form the filtration section ( fig9 e ). a photo of the integrated micro - channel device is also shown in fig9 f . prior to the device integration , we modified the ucnts via acid or plasma to investigate the correlation between the surface functionalities and the desalination efficiency ( see methods ). figure boa shows the resonant micro - raman spectra of all the ucnt - mce membranes used in the experiments . in these spectra , the g peak at 1584 cm − 1 can be assigned to the phonon mode e 2g in cnts , which involves the out - of - phase intra - layer displacements ; while the d ( at 1350 cm − 1 ) and d ′ ( at 1622 cm − 1 ) peaks correspond to the disorder - induced phonon modes arising from the finite size of the crystals and defects , respectively 31 . the positions of these peaks remained essentially unchanged for pristine and acid / plasma - modified ucnt - mce membranes . however , the relative intensities of the d and g peaks ( i . e ., i d / i g ratio ), which is generally used to determine the impurity and structural quality of cnts 32 , increased from 0 . 8 for the pristine membrane to 1 . 26 for the plasma - modified one ( inset of fig1 a ). this indicated that more defective structures were induced on the ucnts by the plasma modification 33 . the above raman analysis was further verified by x - ray photoelectron spectroscopy ( xps ). as shown in fig1 b , the intensity ratio between c 1 s and o 1 s peaks of the pristine ucnt - mce membrane ( i . e ., i c / i o ratio ) decreased after the plasma modification . the corresponding c is narrow scans revealed that more oxygen - containing bonds , such as the hydroxylic (— oh ) and carboxylic (— cooh ) surface groups , were formed in the plasma - modified samples ( fig4 ). these results unambiguously indicated that the plasma had introduced surface functional groups and altered the ucnt structure , which in turn played an important role in the adsorption - based water desalination and filtration . in addition , the morphology and structure of the ucnt layers before and after plasma modification were studied by sem and tem . fig1 c and 10 d illustrate the sem images of the pristine and plasma - modified ucnt - mce membranes respectively . it was observed that the pristine ucnts were synthesized with a high quality . few amorphous carbon structures were detected and highly ordered graphitic structures were found in the corresponding tem images ( inset of fig1 c ). on the other hand , the ucnt - mce membranes after 5 or 10 min plasma treatment exhibited severe structural damage on the outer layers where the graphitic walls were no longer evident ( inset of fig1 d ), which is consistent with the above raman and xps results . it should be noted that the structure of ucnts was not completely destroyed in the plasma surface modification process ; instead , the outer layers of ucnts were functionalized ( fig3 ). the desalination performance of the pressure - driven micro - channel device was evaluated by measuring the conductivity change of salt water after flowing through the device with a single inlet and outlet ( fig9 e ). the entire system including the upstream and downstream volumes was initially filled with nacl solution ( 3500 ppm or 0 . 06 m ). pre - filling with the saline solution was employed to avoid bubble entrapment and to exclude any fresh water from the system , so that any change in conductivity , could be directly related to the removal of salt by the ucnts . the solution was then pumped through the device and the real - time salt concentration of the output stream was monitored . fig1 a plots the conductivity curves of salt water after passing through the four different membranes ( table 1 ). the conductivity of salt water flowing through the pristine ucnt - mce membrane ( i . e ., sample i ) firstly decreased and then rapidly increased to reach a stabilized value of the initial nacl solution within a short period of time (& lt ; 1 min ). in contrast , the conductivity remained at a significantly low level for the acid modified ucnt - mce membrane ( i . e ., sample ii ). only after 5 min , the conductivity started to increase and finally reached the feed concentration value . for the plasma modified membranes ( i . e ., samples iii and iv ), the conductivity did not start to rise until 7 . 5 - 10 min ; and the stabilized value was reached only after 13 - 15 min . the mass m of salt removed by each membrane can be calculated based on the conductivity curves and the flow rate 34 m =∫ 0 v ( c 0 − c t )× dv ( 1 ) where c 0 is the initial salt concentration , c t is the real - time salt concentration determined from the electrical measurement , and v is the volume of the solution flowed . we found that approximately 8 μg (˜ 18 % w / w ) of salt was removed by the pristine ucnt - mce membrane ( sample i ; inset of fig1 a ). this amount of salt removal significantly increased to ˜ 60 μg for the acid - modified membrane ( sample ii ; inset of fig1 a ). the maximum salt removal was observed on the two plasma - modified samples iii and iv ( inset of fig1 a ) with ˜ 180 and ˜ 225 μg of salt removal respectively . considering that the total mass of ucnts that contributed to the water desalination process was only about 45 μg , the adsorption capacity of the plasma - modified ucnts ( defined as the total removed salt divided by the total weight of ucnts ) is found to be 400 % w / w ( i . e ., 4 g / g or 4000 mg / g ). the amount of salt that can be removed by the activated carbons reported in the literature is around 2 - 20 mg / g ( or 0 . 2 - 2 % w / w ) 11 . therefore , the adsorption capacity of plasma - modified ucnts is about two orders of magnitude higher than that of activated carbons . the amount of salt removal is also notably higher than the adsorption capacity of the state - of - the - art porous carbon materials (˜ 15 mg / g or 1 . 5 % w / w ) used in the capacitive deionization 35 . to further elucidate the ultrahigh specific adsorption capability of sample iv , the above experiment was repeated with the nacl solution at varied concentrations of 7000 , 3500 and 1700 ppm . fig1 b shows the adsorption - desorption cycles for sample iv , where the desorption process was carried out by flowing tap water ( obtained from cambridge water department , ma ) following a maximum adsorption , i . e ., a stabilized conductivity in the curves . one can see that at a higher nacl concentration , the adsorption reached its maximum value faster than that at a lower concentration . the total amount of salt removed , however , was relatively constant regardless of the salt concentration ( inset of fig1 b ). this independence between the salt removal and the concentration ( i . e ., ionic strength ) of the salt solution further confirmed the proposed adsorptive mechanism : if the salt removal was dominated by electrostatic repulsion or electrokinetic effects , the desalination capacity would be sensitive to the ionic strength and the debye screening length &# 39 ; s , but a constant amount of salt would be removed if the ucnts had a high affinity for salt adsorption . additionally , the plasma modified membrane could achieve a 100 % recovery of its salt - removal capability simply by rinsing with tap water ( fig1 b ). the adsorbed salt on the surface of different ucnt membranes was further visualized by sem . as shown in fig1 c and 11 d , only a few nacl nanocrystals were observed on the surface of the pristine sample i , whereas a significantly higher density of nacl nanocrystals was found on the plasma modified sample iv . small - sized nacl crystals on the ucnts , presumably on the defective sites and possibly penetrating within the ucnt , were also observed in the high - resolution tem image ( fig1 e and fig5 ); and their crystal lattice could be clearly identified ( inset of fig1 e ). these observations further suggest that the ucnt - based membranes did not operate as a semipermeable medium to filter the salt ( i . e ., the mechanism of ro membranes ); instead , they utilized the ultrahigh adsorption capacity to remove salt from the solution . it should be noted that in contrast to the absorption mechanism where molecules intercalate into the crystal structures of materials , the adsorption mechanism ( surface effect ) results in the nucleation of salt crystals on the surface and / or filling of the pores inside the membranes 36 . given the different densities of ucnts and nacl crystals , the surface coverage and volume occupation of salt adsorbed is estimated to be 35 - 70 % of the membrane , which agreed well with the microscopic observations . we attribute this high adsorption capability of samples iii and iv to the numerous defective sites created by plasma treatment . the high - resolution tem images suggest that the plasma treatment significantly damaged the ucnts , making the outer layers amorphous and possibly porous ( fig1 d and fig5 ). strong acid or plasma is known to partially damage the graphitic structure of cnts and create dangling bonds , which then react with the ambient gases to form various functional / charged groups , particularly the oxygen - containing groups such as — cooh and — oh 18 . the above raman and xps analyses confirmed the presence of these functional groups on the acid / plasma modified ucnts ( fig1 ). in combination with a high surface area , these functional groups could greatly enhance surface hydrophilicity and ion binding properties of the modified ucnts 18 . in addition , with a small (˜ 10 nm ) ucnt diameter , their modified outer layers are easily accessible to the solution . consequently , a high salt adsorption capability was achieved with the modified ucnts when salt water flowed through the porous structure 37 , 38 . it is worth mentioning that samples ii - iv could completely remove salt below the detection threshold of 10 − 7 m from the solution in the first round of the filtration process ( shown in fig1 a in the first 5 min ), whereas little salt was removed for the pristine ucnt - mce membranes . the nearly complete removal of salt implied an excellent mass transfer from the solution to the ucnts . assuming a pore size of 200 nm , a ucnt layer thickness of 500 nm , and a flow velocity of 5 × 10 − 5 m / s , the péclet number ( p e =□ l / d , where □ is the flow velocity , l is the characteristic length and d is the diffusion coefficient of sodium ions ), which defines the ratio of convective to diffusive mass transfer , is estimated to be 2 . 5 × 10 − 4 . since p e & lt ;& lt ; 1 , it is expected that diffusion will be sufficient to ensure salt adsorption as the solution flows through the ucnt layer . an efficient water membrane should also be capable to effectively remove organic or inorganic contaminants linking to waterborne diseases , including biomolecules , microorganisms , and heavy metals . to verify such capability of the current ucnt - mce membranes , we used sample iv as an example to filter dextran molecules ( m w = 70 , 000 ) labeled with rhodamine . the aqueous solution of these fluorescent rhodamin - dextran ( rd ) conjugates was filtered through the same micro - channel device and the concentration of rd in the filtered water was determined by uv - vis spectrophotometry . to examine the effect of charges on rd molecules ( pk a ˜ 6 . 4 ) 19 , the solution &# 39 ; s ph value was also adjusted to 4 or 7 . 100 - μl aliquots were collected during the filtration process . fig1 a and 12 b show the adsorption spectra of water with rdatph = 7 and 4 respectively . it is observed that the intensity of both spectra first decreased , and then increased gradually as the filtration progressed . this property is more clearly shown by the adsorption measurements taken at 514 nm . as shown in fig1 c , the peak intensity ( i . e ., ˜ 514 nm ) of filtered solution decreased sharply in the first few aliquots ; it then recovered to the value of fresh rd solution at longer times . fluorescence microscopic analysis of the membranes revealed that the ucnts were fully covered with rd molecules after filtration ( inset in fig1 c ). arguably , the adsorption capability was stabilized in a slower manner in rdsolution at ph = 4 ( fig1 c ), suggesting that the charge on the molecules may also play a role in the interactions with the ucnts . the plasma modified ucnt - mce membrane is also capable of removing heavy metal nanoparticles . to demonstrate this , sample iv was again used to filter water dispersed with gold nanoparticles ( nps ). fig1 d and 12 e show the optical absorbance of the filtered water with gold nps at an average diameter of 5 and 10 nm , respectively . it is seen that both sized gold nps were effectively removed . gold nps embedded in the ucnt networks were also observed by tem images ( insets in fig1 d and 12 e ). fig1 f plots the peak intensity ( at 521 nm ) of water dispersed with gold nps as the filtration progressed . the plots show that gold nps with a smaller size can be removed more effectively than their larger counterparts . this result is contradictory to the size - selective mechanism commonly observed in many porous membranes , where the passage of small - sized nanoparticles is preferred . however , it is consistent with the proposed adsorptive mechanism . in the case of small - sized gold nps , the interactions between the surface defective sites on the ucnts and the nps are substantially stronger 33 , leading to higher retention efficiency . in contrast , the relatively weak interactions on larger gold nps were less effective in retaining them 39 . to further verify , the high adsorption capacity of plasma modified ucnt - mce membranes , we studied the adsorption behavior of the four types of membranes ( i - iv , 1 cm 2 area ) in static salt water ( 0 . 02 m or 1167 ppm nacl ). fig1 a shows the conductivity changes of the salt water as a function of the immersion time . by converting the conductivity changes to the mass of salt removed , the adsorption capacity of sample iv was found to be 590 μg with 160 μg of ucnts immersed ( fig1 b ), which was the highest value among the four membranes . this result is in a good agreement with the 400 % w / w specific adsorption observed in the micro - channel filtration experiments . in comparison , the pristine ucnt - based membrane ( sample i ) and the pure mce membrane showed adsorption of & lt ; 20 μg ( inset of fig1 b ). these results therefore confirmed that plasma treatment is essential for an enhanced salt adsorption of the ucnt - based membranes . to demonstrate the critical role of ucnts played in the adsorption , commercial multi - walled carbon nanotubes ( mwcnts ) were also employed to construct the membranes using the same procedures . these mwcnts had a fig6 ). fig1 b shows the adsorption kinetic tests in static salt water , where samples v and vi represent the pristine and plasma modified short cnt - based membranes , respectively . it is found that both membranes exhibited a similar adsorption behavior with the same amount of salt removal of ˜ 200 μg ( inset of fig1 b ). this adsorption capacity was higher than that of the pristine ucnt membranes , but was significantly lower than that of the plasma modified ucnt samples . microscopic analyses indicated that in contrast to the ucnt layer , a much sparse structure of the top mwcnt layer was formed on the porous mce support ( fig8 ). this is possibly due to the short length of mwcnts , which provided insufficient van der waals &# 39 ; forces to bundle them firmly 40 and were too short to form a layer similar to that of the much longer ucnts . furthermore , xps spectra revealed that plasma was not so efficient in introducing defective sites on these mwcnts ( fig6 and 7 ). the sparse structure and the less defective sites could therefore be responsible for the moderate adsorption capacity observed on these short cnt - based membranes . to further study the adsorption characteristics of the ucnts , we synthesized 10 min plasma - treated ucnt - mce membrane with different ucnt masses and immersed the samples in static salt water ( 0 . 02m or 1167 ppm nacl ). as shown in fig1 c , the specific adsorption results are in a close agreement with 400 % w / w adsorption capacity . next , we tested the adsorption capacity of 160 μg ucnt - mce membrane in salt water at different concentrations . the removed salt as a function of the final solution conductivity fitted well to the langmuir adsorption isotherm ( fig1 d ): where the θ is the mass of salt adsorbed normalized by the total salt adsorption capacity , c is the salt concentration , and c 0 is the langmuir adsorption constant . this curve shows that the 10 min plasma treated ucnt - mce membrane has a corresponding c 0 of ˜ 250 ppm ( 4 . 3 mm ), i . e ., half the adsorption capacity of the ucnts is attained at 250 ppm . knowing this value , we can estimate the interfacial energy change involved in salt adsorption . for precipitation of a thin layer of salt on a surface , the work of precipitation w is given by 41 where n is the number of salt molecules precipitated , s is the ratio of the actual activity of the salt to that of salt at saturation , δγ is the net change in interfacial energy per unit area , v 0 is the molecular volume , and t is the thickness of the precipitated crystal ( nv 0 / t is the area ). assuming that the surface on which adsorption occurs is nearly covered when the salt concentration is 10 mm , setting the work of precipitation to zero at that concentration ( i . e ., assuming equilibrium ) yields δγ ˜ 0 . 025 n / m for t = 0 . 2 nm and δγ ˜ 0 . 125 n / m for t = 1 nm . this order of magnitude of surface energy is within the range of known interfacial energies ( e . g ., surface energy of nacl crystals is ˜ 0 . 4 n / m ) 42 , suggesting that the observed langmuir adsorption may be explained by the high surface energy of the plasma - treated ucnts . the exact mechanism of the salt adsorption , namely the molecular structure of the adsorbed salt and to what extent it penetrates into the layers of the ucnts to result in the remarkable adsorption capacity , presents an intriguing question that will require further investigations . the main criteria in the development of potable point - of - use water desalination systems include the cost , the efficiency , the usability , and the ability to simultaneously desalinate and purify contaminated water . in particular , one has to meet the economic and technical challenges in developing countries and resource - limited areas where clean water and sanitation are of most urgency . the feasibility of using such systems in remote areas without a continuous power supply is also practically important . to this end , we have demonstrated the high performance of plasma modified ucnt - based porous membranes in the removal of salt , organic molecules , and metal nanoparticles from low salinity solutions . the ultrahigh specific adsorption capacity obtained on these ucnt - based membranes has been attributed to the large surface area of ucnts and the plasma modification effects , which effectively introduced functional groups and defective sites in the outer layers of ucnts . due to the adsorption mechanism , the ucnt - based membranes have low pressure operation ; the flow only serves to ensure a faster convection of salt to the ucnts , where the salt adsorption process will be transport limited , and any flow or mixing will therefore increase the rate of adsorption . the ucnts can simultaneously desalinate water and remove organic / inorganic contaminants , and the porous mce membrane can filter out microbes . as compared to the currently - available water desalination techniques , the advantages of using the ucnt - based membranes with ultrahigh adsorption capability are obvious : ro membranes require pressure exceeding the osmotic pressure , and neither electrodialysis ( ed ) nor capacitive deionization ( cdi ) is suited for the removal of organic chemicals unless an , additional barrier is used . hence , it is believed that the ucnt - based membranes will be promising in the next - generation low - cost and compact portable pou water desalination and purification devices that can meet the needs in developing countries and resource - limited areas . furthermore , ro systems are usually installed in a fixed location and the required operating equipment cannot be carried easily by a single person so that their mobility is limited . in contrast , the driving force for desalination of ucnt - based membranes is the free energy of adsorption and only a small pressure drop is required to provide sufficient water flux . the salt can even self - diffuse to the membrane and get absorbed , as demonstrated in the static adsorption tests . the pressure drop is much lower than that of the conventional ro technique at the same concentration of salt water . we anticipate that devices made from the ucnt membranes may operate as a rechargeable cartridge , similar to a battery : the devices could be carried on person to provide clean water , and recharged at a station where fresh water is available . for example , about 100 l of brackish water ( 10 , 000 ppm ) could be purified by 250 g of the ucnts . it is noted that point - of - use ro desalination systems have recently become available in the market ; however , issues associated with the common ro membranes remain , i . e ., low water flux , high energy and operational cost , and the inability to remove organics , pathogens , and heavy metal contaminants which are harmful to human 4 , 10 . the unique features possessed by the ucnt - based membranes are thus advantageous even as compared with the state - of - the art point - of - use ro systems . results of ultrahigh adsorption capability of ucnt - based membranes were mainly obtained from the low salinity water . some practical issues may arise when one tries to extend the current studies to the desalination of real seawater . for example , seawater has complex ion makeups . in certain zeolite exchange - based desalination systems , the divalent ions ( e . g ., mg 2 + , ca 2 + ) with higher charge densities might block sites for the monovalent ions when the systems allow them to enter the porous structure equally . 43 further investigations are thus needed to elucidate whether the ucnt - based membranes are uniquely suited for other applications besides those discussed above . in conclusion , we demonstrate that plasma - treated ucnts display a remarkably high capacity for adsorption of salt . plasma treatment causes severe structural damage to the outer layers of the ucnt that are subsequently functionalized with oxygen - containing groups , which , coupled with the high surface area of the ucnts , likely results in the high salt adsorption . while desalination has been difficult to achieve using adsorptive materials , the ucnts on porous mce membranes could desalinate water , adsorbing up to 400 % w / w of salt . this adsorption capacity was easily recovered by rinsing with tap water . furthermore , the ucnts could also adsorb organics and nanoparticles . devices made using these membranes may be useful for pou purification of brackish water , operating like rechargeable cartridges . while the exact mechanism of salt adsorption is not understood , further studies may provide insight into design of materials with ultrahigh adsorption capacity for a variety of applications . whilst there has been described in the foregoing description preferred embodiments of the present invention , it will be understood by those skilled in the technology concerned that many variations or modifications in details of design or construction may be made without departing from the present invention . 1 . semiat r . energy issues in desalination processes . environ . sci . technol . 42 , 8193 ( 2008 ). 2 . service , r . f . desalination freshens up . science 313 , 1088 ( 2006 ). 3 . lee , k . p ., arnot , t . c . & amp ; mattia , d . a review of reverse osmosis membrane materials for desalination - 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