Professor Ma Jie’s Team Published in Nature Communications: A New Progress in Desalination of Capacitive Deionization by “Order-in-Disordered” Ultrathin Carbon Nanostructure

Prof. Jie Ma and his cooperators have published a research paper in the international authoritative journal 《Nature Communications》: Order-in-disordered ultrathin carbon nanostructure with nitrogen-rich defects bridged by pseudographitic domains for high-performance ion capture, Nature Communications, 2024, 15, 6437.

This work developed a supramolecular self-assembly strategy to fabricate the high-level nitrogen-doped nanosheet-like carbon (NSLC) with enhanced electrical conductivity for electrochemical water desalination. The supramolecular crosslinking can produce abundant nanobubbles in boundary by introducing structural units of uric acid (UA) and melamine with differential thermal stability, thus tensionally inducing the formation of graphitic nanodomains among nitrogen-rich segments. The “order-in-disorder” nanosheet-like carbon obtained at 800 °C (O/D NSLC-800) discloses the application potentiality for brackish water (ca. 82 mgNaCl g−1 at a cell voltage of 1.6 V in a 1000 mg L−1 NaCl solution) and actual industrial circulating cooling water. The synergy of “order-in-disorder” coupling structure for enhanced ion-capture performance was revealed by advanced electrochemical analysis, in situ attenuated total reflection (ATR)-FTIR microscopy, and quantum chemical calculations. This work paves an avenue to fabricate highly heteroatom-doped carbon with high conductivity for advanced electrochemical applications based on precursor design at molecular level.