Tunable C2N Membrane for High Efficient Water Desalination

Water scarcity represents one of the most serious global problems of our time and challenges the advancements in desalination techniques. Although water-filtering architectures based on graphene have greatly advanced the approach to high performance desalination membranes, the controlled-generation of nanopores with particular diameter is tricky and has stunted its wide applications. Here, through molecular dynamic simulations and first-principles calculations, we propose that the recently reported graphene-like carbon nitride (g-C2N) monolayer can serve as high efficient filters for water desalination. Taking the advantages of the intrisic nanoporous structure and excellent mechanical properties of g-C2N, high water transparency and strong salt filtering capability have been demonstrated in our simulations. More importantly, the "open" and "closed" states of the g-C2N filter can be precisely regulated by tensile strain. It is found that the water permeability of g-C2N is significantly higher than that reported for graphene filters by almost one order of magnitude. In the light of the abundant family of graphene-like carbon nitride monolayered materials, our results thus offer a promising approach to the design of high efficient filteration architectures.