Selectivity via transport energy barriers in Practical Graphene Oxide membranes
Event details
| Date | 21.08.2026 |
| Hour | 16:00 › 17:00 |
| Speaker | Prof. Mainak Majumder |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract :
[1] Akbari et al., Nat Commun 7, 10891 (2016), [2] Sheath et al., Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.374: 20150028, [3] Akbari et al., ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2018, 10, 2, 2067–2074, [4] Meragawi et al., ACS Appl. Bio Mater. 2020, 3, 1, 584–592, [5] Mergawai et al., J. Mater. Chem. A, 2020,8, 24800-24811, [6] Meragawi et al., ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2021, 9, 32, 10846–10856 [7] Mahofa et al., ACS Nano., 2025,19,14742−14755 [8] Afnas Villayatteri et al., Nano Letters, 2025, 25,15322−15330
Bio :
Mainak Majumder is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of Monash University, where he has been since 2010. He joined Monash after a two-year postdoctoral stint at Rice University, USA with Professors P.M. Ajayan and Matteo Pasquali. He earned a PhD with Professor Bruce J. Hinds at the University of Kentucky, USA studying mass and molecule transport in aligned carbon nanotube membranes. Currently, he is the Director of the Australian Research Council’s Research Hub on Advanced Manufacturing with 2D Materials (https://am2d.org), which is a $9M initiative of the Australian government with local industries to support commercialization of Graphene-enabled technologies. He is also the Senior Advisor of the Monash Energy Institute (https://www.monash.edu/energy-institute), a local organization dedicated to maximising the impact of energy research at Monash University.
Membrane-based separation technologies have many advantages over traditional separation methods such as adsorption, and distillation in terms of energy- and cost-efficiency and modular deployment of technology. In practice, these advantages can be meaningfully harnessed only if advanced membranes with properties such as high permeance, tailorable selectivity [1-2], chlorine, pH and solvent resistance [3-4], low-fouling characteristics [1], long-term stability under operational conditions [5,6] alongside green and sustainable manufacturability [6] are demonstrated. In the last 8-10 years, our research group has taken rapid strides to realize these properties in membranes made from graphene-oxide, including scaled-up manufacturing in roll-to-roll approaches.
Recently, our efforts have been focused on tailoring the interpore energy barriers in the graphene oxide nanochannels to impart selectivity which are non-classical, determined primarily by interactions from confined molecules. With this philosophy we have been to separate short-chain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and concentrate them with efficiencies higher than what commercial membranes are capable of [7]. Confined amino acids inside the nanochannels, another example of transport modifiers, can create environments where ion-ion selectivity can be studied. [8] In this talk, I will summarize this journey reflecting also on industrial deployment of spiral wound membrane modules conducted in close collaboration with industry partners and water utility companies.[1] Akbari et al., Nat Commun 7, 10891 (2016), [2] Sheath et al., Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.374: 20150028, [3] Akbari et al., ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2018, 10, 2, 2067–2074, [4] Meragawi et al., ACS Appl. Bio Mater. 2020, 3, 1, 584–592, [5] Mergawai et al., J. Mater. Chem. A, 2020,8, 24800-24811, [6] Meragawi et al., ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2021, 9, 32, 10846–10856 [7] Mahofa et al., ACS Nano., 2025,19,14742−14755 [8] Afnas Villayatteri et al., Nano Letters, 2025, 25,15322−15330
Mainak Majumder is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of Monash University, where he has been since 2010. He joined Monash after a two-year postdoctoral stint at Rice University, USA with Professors P.M. Ajayan and Matteo Pasquali. He earned a PhD with Professor Bruce J. Hinds at the University of Kentucky, USA studying mass and molecule transport in aligned carbon nanotube membranes. Currently, he is the Director of the Australian Research Council’s Research Hub on Advanced Manufacturing with 2D Materials (https://am2d.org), which is a $9M initiative of the Australian government with local industries to support commercialization of Graphene-enabled technologies. He is also the Senior Advisor of the Monash Energy Institute (https://www.monash.edu/energy-institute), a local organization dedicated to maximising the impact of energy research at Monash University.
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
Organizer
- Prof. Kumar Varonn Agrawal
Contact
- Prof. Kumar Varoon Agrawal