Microporous membranes comprising conjugated polymers with rigid backbones enable ultrafast organic-solvent nanofiltration.

Conventional technology for the purification of organic solvents requires massive energy consumption, and to reduce such expending calls for efficient filtration membranes capable of high retention of large molecular solutes and high permeance for solvents. Herein, we report a surface-initiated polymerization strategy through C-C coupling reactions for preparing conjugated microporous polymer (CMP) membranes. The backbone of the membranes consists of all-rigid conjugated systems and shows high resistance to organic solvents. We show that 42-nm-thick CMP membranes supported on polyacrylonitrile substrates provide excellent retention of solutes and broad-spectrum nanofiltration in both non-polar hexane and polar methanol, the permeance for which reaches 32 and 22 l m-2 h-1 bar-1, respectively. Both experiments and simulations suggest that the performance of CMP membranes originates from substantially open and interconnected voids formed in the highly rigid networks.

MoS2 /Celgard Separator as Efficient Polysulfide Barrier for Long-Life Lithium-Sulfur Batteries.

A high lithium conductive MoS2 /Celgard composite separator is reported as efficient polysulfides barrier in Li-S batteries. Significantly, thanks to the high density of lithium ions on MoS2 surface, this composite separator shows high lithium conductivity, fast lithium diffusion, and facile lithium transference. When used in Li-S batteries, the separator is proven to be highly efficient for depressing polysulfides shuttle, leading to high and long cycle stability. With 65% of sulfur loading, the device with MoS2 /Celgard separator delivers an initial capacity of 808 mAh g-1 and a substantial capacity of 401 mAh g-1 after 600 cycles, corresponding to only 0.083% of capacity decay per cycle that is comparable to the best reported result so far. In addition, the Coulombic efficiency remains more than 99.5% during all 600 cycles, disclosing an efficient ionic sieve preventing polysulfides migration to the anode while having negligible influence on Li+ ions transfer across the separator. The strategy demonstrated in this work will open the door toward developing efficient separators with flexible 2D materials beyond graphene for energy-storage devices.