Ultrathin lamellar MoS2 membranes for organic solvent nanofiltration.

High-performance nanofiltration membranes applicable to organic solvents are urgently needed for chemical and environment related industries. In this work, the ultrathin two dimensional (2D) lamellar nanofiltration membranes were fabricated by layer-by-layer stacking MoS 2 nanosheet building blocks. MoS 2 based membranes have highly ordered and regular transport channels with narrowly distributed sizes, which enable high permeances and favorable rejections to be achieved. The D-MoS 2 membrane in the dry state with a thickness of 20 nm exhibits an exceptional water and acetonitrile permeance of 458 and 1371 L m−2 h−1·bar−1 respectively. The higher permeance of water and acetonitrile was gained by the S–MoS 2 membrane in the solvated state with a thickness of 36 nm, which can reach 1881 and 5207 L m−2 h−1·bar−1 respectively. Both of D-MoS 2 and S–MoS 2 membranes give rise to good separation efficiency, e.g., evans blue and methylene blue rejections of 100%. In addition, the transfer mass nanochannels in MoS 2 derived membranes show quite high stability toward high pressure, acid, base, and oxidative environments. • MoS 2 based membranes in both of dry and solvated states have highly ordered and regular transport channels with narrowly distributed sizes. • The MoS 2 membrane exhibits an exceptional water and acetonitrile permeance of 1881 and 5207 L m−2 h−1·bar−1 respectively. • Both of dry and solvated MoS 2 membranes give rise to good separation efficiency towards molecules with sizes above 1.4 nm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]