THE IMPACT OF SONICATION ON GRAPHENE OXIDE'S PHYSICOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES AND NANOFILTRATION PERFORMANCE OF COVALENT CROSSLINKED MEMBRANES

摘要

Fuelled by its ease of fabrication,hydrophilicity and chemical robustness,graphene oxide(GO)is emerging as a promising versatile next generation nanomaterial.This makes it a reasonable graphene substitute in several applications including separation membranes.Prior to fabrication into applicable thin films and membranes via dispersion-needing fabrication techniques,GO is often sonicated to enhance the individuality and dispersion of its nanosheets in aqueous and polar solvent solutions.However,it has been established that sonication comes with the alteration of the physical and chemical features of GO to an extent [1],This study thus looks co-currently into the impact of preparatory GO sonication durations onto its physicochemical properties together with its impact on the nanofiltration performance of crosslinked GO membranes in water purification.The establishment of a relation between the sonication duration of GO dispersion and the overall nanofiltration performance of the fabricated crosslinker was mainly significant in deriving the ideal sonication duration.This is further established through key characterisations of differently sonicated GO samples to determine the change in physical and chemical quality content of the samples as the sonication duration increases.