Seth Darling
Title: Cleaning Water with Dirt: Tunable Ion Transport in Phyllosilicate Membranes
First and last name: Seth Darling
Affiliation: Argonne National Laboratory
Short Biography:
Seth Darling is the Chief Science & Technology Officer of the Advanced Energy Technologies Directorate and a Senior Scientist in the Chemical Sciences & Engineering Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, where he has worked for over 20 years. He also serves as the Director of the Advanced Materials for Energy-Water Systems (AMEWS) Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) and is a Senior Scientist with the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. His group’s research centers around molecular engineering with a current emphasis on advanced materials for cleaning water.
Abstract:
The interlayer galleries in membranes integrating two-dimensional (2D) materials drive separation and selectivity, with specific transport properties determined by the chemical and structural modifications. We report an approach to tuning interlayer spacing with a single source material (e.g., exfoliated and restacked vermiculite) with molecular cross-linkers to control the gallery height, enhance the membrane stability, and manipulate the chemical and electrostatic environment in the channels [1]. The as-prepared cross-linked 2D phyllosilicate membranes exhibit ion diffusivities tuned by the length of the selected cross-linking molecule. The 2D nanochannels in these stabilized membranes enable a systematic study of confined ionic transport.
Figure 1: Schematic of a phyllosilicate membrane stabilized using molecular cross-linkers.