Biomimetic MXene membranes with negatively thermo-responsive switchable 2D nanochannels for graded molecular sieving

Negatively thermo-responsive 2D membranes,which mimic the stomatal opening/closing of plants,have drawn substantial interest for tunable molecular separation processes.However,these membranes are still restricted significantly on account of low water permeability and poor dynamic tunability of 2D nanochannels under temperature stimulation.Here,we present a biomimetic negatively thermo-responsive MXene membrane by covalently grafting poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)(PNIPAm)onto MXene nanosheets.The uniformly grafted PNIPAm polymer chains can enlarge the interlayer spacings for increasing water permeability while also allowing more tunability of 2D nanochannels for enhancing the capability of gradually separating multiple molecules of different sizes.As expected,the constructed membrane exhibits ultrahigh water permeance of 95.6 L m^(-2) h^(-1) bar^(-1) at 25℃,which is eight-fold higher than the state-of-the-art negatively thermoresponsive 2D membranes.Moreover,the highly temperature-tunable 2D nanochannels enable the constructed membrane to perform excellent graded molecular sieving for dye-and antibiotic-based ternary mixtures.This strategy provides new perspectives in engineering smart 2D membrane and expands the scope of temperature-responsive membranes,showing promising applications in micro/nanofluidics and molecular separation.

Temperature-tunable lasing in negative dielectric chiral nematic liquid crystal

In this work, negative dielectric nematic liquid crystal SLC 12V620-400, chiral dopant S811, and laser dye DCM are used to prepare dye-doped chiral nematic liquid crystal laser sample. In order to investigate temperature-tunable lasing in negative dielectric chiral nematic liquid crystal, we measure the transmission and lasing spectrum of this sample. The photonic band gap （PBG） is observed to red shift with its width reducing from 71.2 nm to 40.2 nm, and its short-wavelength band edge moves 55.3 nm while the long-wavelength band edge only moves 24.9 nm. The wavelength of output laser is found to red shift from 614.4 nm at 20 ~C to 662.8 nm at 67 ~C, which is very different from the previous experimental phenomena. The refractive indices, parallel and perpendicular to the director in chiral nematic liquid crystal have different dependencies on temperature. The experiment shows that the pitch of this chiral nematic liquid crystal increases with the increase of temperature. The decrease in the PBG width, different shifts of band edges, and the red shift of laser wavelength are the results of refractive indices change and pitch thermal elongation.