Application of graphene, graphene oxide, and boron nitride nanosheets in the water treatment

Abstract

In this research, we study recent advances in the use of graphene, graphene oxide, and boron nitride nanosheets for the water treatment processes. The perfect nanostructured membranes are impermeable to ions or molecules. Therefore, for using them in the selective separation processes, they should be drilled and so, the created pores will be functionalized using appropriate chemical functional groups. Up to now, numerous research articles have been done on the use of functionalized chemical groups on the nanostructured membranes but the results of those works have not been compared with each other. Therefore, a comprehensive review of the structural property and application of functional groups at the edge of membranes pores was performed. To the best of our knowledge, no review study has been reported in the literature on the effect of functionalized groups on the separation of molecules or ions by nanostructured membranes. This review paper aims to draw the attention of the theoretical as well as the experimental researchers working on the functionalized materials towards the recent developments probing the permeation of various species such as atoms, ions, and small molecules through graphene, graphene oxide, and boron nitride nanosheets.