Silk fibroin fibers with in situ growth of ZIF-67 nanoparticles for membranes with highly efficient nanofluidic ion transport

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

ACS Applied Nano Materials

Volume

7

Issue

16

First Page

19481

Last Page

19492

Publisher

ACS

School

School of Engineering

Comments

Heidarizadeh, M., Noorbakhsh, A., Razmjou, A., & Sutherland, D. S. (2024). Silk fibroin fibers with in situ growth of ZIF-67 nanoparticles for membranes with highly efficient nanofluidic ion transport. ACS Applied Nano Materials, 7(16), 19481-19492. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsanm.4c03394

Abstract

Nanofluidic systems due to their unique transport properties play a crucial role in a lot of applications ranging from water desalination to sensors. Over the past few years, considering the simple structure of two-dimensional materials, significant efforts have been devoted to designing synthetic membranes for ion transport. However, expensive fabrication methods such as lithography techniques and some shortcomings such as scale-up difficulty, low pore density, poor mechanical stability, and biocompatibility limit their practical application. Herein, we demonstrate a scalable hierarchically porous membrane with three-dimensional (3D) interconnected nanochannels which is based on the silk fibroin (SF) fiber biomass and modifying the nanofluidic channels by in situ growth of zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 (ZIF-67) nanoparticles on the fiber surfaces. The ZIF-67/SF membrane with 400 μm thickness is a 3D interconnected network with a large positively charged surface area (54 m2 g-1) containing 1-5 nm pores estimated from density functional theory modeling. Surface-charge-governed ion transport through the nanofluidic channels of the ZIF-67/SF membrane is systematically explored, and characteristic higher-than-bulk ion conductivity was observed at low concentrations (≤10-3 M) of monovalent electrolytes (KCl, NaCl, NaOH, and HCl). Moreover, the ZIF-67/SF is stable and fully functional at elevated temperatures up to 60 °C and maintains its structural and operational properties under acidic and basic conditions.

DOI

10.1021/acsanm.4c03394

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