Matthew E. Suss

TL;DR: Capacitive deionization (CDI) is an emerging technology for the facile removal of charged ionic species from aqueous solutions, and is currently being widely explored for water desalination applications.

TL;DR: In this article, the synthesis of carbon aerogels with hierarchical porosities for energy applications, including carbon nanotube and graphene composite carbon aeroglobels, as well as their functionalization by surface engineering are discussed.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a flow-through electrode (FTE) capacitive desalination, where the feed water flows directly through electrodes along the primary electric field direction, which enables significant reduction in desalization time and can desalinate higher salinity feeds per charge.

Abstract: In this proof-of-concept study, we introduce and demonstrate MXene as a novel type of intercalation electrode for desalination via capacitive deionization (CDI). Traditional CDI cells employ nanoporous carbon electrodes with significant pore volume to achieve a large desalination capacity via ion electrosorption. By contrast, MXene stores charge by ion intercalation between the sheets of its two-dimensional nanolamellar structure. By this virtue, it behaves as an ideal pseudocapacitor, that is, showing capacitive electric response while intercalating both anions and cations. We synthesized Ti3C2-MXene by the conventional process of etching ternary titanium aluminum carbide i.e., the MAX phase (Ti3AlC2) with hydrofluoric acid. The MXene material was cast directly onto the porous separator of the CDI cell without added binder, and exhibited very stable performance over 30 CDI cycles with an average salt adsorption capacity of 13 ± 2 mg g−1.

TL;DR: The synthesis of a three-dimensional macroassembly of graphene sheets with electrical conductivity and Young's modulus orders of magnitude higher than those previously reported, super-compressive deformation behavior, and surface areas approaching theoretically maximum values is reported.