Graphene Nanocomposite Membranes: Fabrication and Water Treatment Applications.

Graphene, a two-dimensional hexagonal honeycomb carbon structure, is widely used in membrane technologies thanks to its unique optical, electrical, mechanical, thermal, chemical and photoelectric properties. The light weight, mechanical strength, anti-bacterial effect, and pollution-adsorption properties of graphene membranes are valuable in water treatment studies. Incorporation of nanoparticles like carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and metal oxide into the graphene filtering nanocomposite membrane structure can provide an improved photocatalysis process in a water treatment system. With the rapid development of graphene nanocomposites and graphene nanocomposite membrane-based acoustically supported filtering systems, including CNTs and visible-light active metal oxide photocatalyst, it is necessary to develop the researches of sustainable and environmentally friendly applications that can lead to new and groundbreaking water treatment systems. In this review, characteristic properties of graphene and graphene nanocomposites are examined, various methods for the synthesis and dispersion processes of graphene, CNTs, metal oxide and polymer nanocomposites and membrane fabrication and characterization techniques are discussed in details with using literature reports and our laboratory experimental results. Recent membrane developments in water treatment applications and graphene-based membranes are reviewed, and the current challenges and future prospects of membrane technology are discussed.

Preparation and Characterization of Freely-Suspended Graphene Nanomechanical Membrane Devices with Quantum Dots for Point-of-Care Applications.

We demonstrate freely suspended graphene-based nanomechanical membranes (NMMs) as acoustic sensors in the audible frequency range. Simple and low-cost procedures are used to fabricate NMMs with various thicknesses based on graphene layers grown by graphite exfoliation and solution processed graphene oxide. In addition, NMMs are grafted with quantum dots (QDs) for characterizing mass sensitive vibrational properties. Thickness, roughness, deformation, deflection and emissions of NMMs with attached QDs are experimented and analyzed by utilizing atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, laser induced deflection analyzer and spectrophotometers. Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) is experimentally achieved between the QDs attached on NMMs and nearby glass surfaces for illustrating acousto-optic utilization in future experimental implementations combining vibrational properties of NMMs with optical emission properties of QDs. This property denoted as vibrating FRET (VFRET) is previously introduced in theoretical studies while important experimental steps are for the first time achieved in this study for future VFRET implementations. The proposed modeling and experimental methodology are promising for future novel applications such as NMM based biosensing, photonics and VFRET based point-of-care (PoC) devices.

Theoretical Modeling of Viscosity Monitoring with Vibrating Resonance Energy Transfer for Point-of-Care and Environmental Monitoring Applications.

Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) between two molecules in nanoscale distances is utilized in significant number of applications including biological and chemical applications, monitoring cellular activities, sensors, wireless communications and recently in nanoscale microfluidic radar design denoted by the vibrating FRET (VFRET) exploiting hybrid resonating graphene membrane and FRET design. In this article, a low hardware complexity and novel microfluidic viscosity monitoring system architecture is presented by exploiting VFRET in a novel microfluidic system design. The donor molecules in a microfluidic channel are acoustically vibrated resulting in VFRET in the case of nearby acceptor molecules detected with their periodic optical emission signals. VFRET does not require complicated hardware by directly utilizing molecular interactions detected with the conventional photodetectors. The proposed viscosity measurement system design is theoretically modeled and numerically simulated while the experimental challenges are discussed. It promises point-of-care and environmental monitoring applications including viscosity characterization of blood or polluted water.

CSSTag: Optical Nanoscale Radar and Particle Tracking for In-Body and Microfluidic Systems With Vibrating Graphene and Resonance Energy Transfer.

Biological particle tracking systems monitor cellular processes or particle behaviors with the great accuracy. The emissions of fluorescent molecules or direct images of particles are captured with cameras or photodetectors. The current imaging systems have challenges in detection, collection, and analysis of imaging data, penetration depth, and complicated set-ups. In this paper, a signaling-based nanoscale acousto-optic radar and microfluidic multiple particle tracking (MPT) system is proposed based on the theoretical design providing nanoscale optical modulator with vibrating Förster resonance energy transfer and vibrating cadmium selenide/zinc sulfide quantum dots (QDs) on graphene resonators. The modulator combines significant advantages of graphene membranes having wideband resonance frequencies with QDs having broad absorption spectrum and tunable properties. The solution denoted by chirp spread spectrum(CSS) Tag utilizes classical radar target tracking approaches in nanoscale environments based on the capability to generate CSS sequences identifying different bio-particles. Monte Carlo simulations show significant performance for MPT with a modulator of dimension and several picograms of weight, the signal-to-noise ratio in the range from -7 to 10 dB, simple light emitting diode sources with power less than 4 W/cm2 and high speed tracking for microfluidic environments.