Arresting Aqueous Swelling of Layered Graphene-Oxide Membranes with H₃O⁺ and OH^– Ions

Over the past decade, graphene oxide (GO) has emerged as a promising membrane material with superior separation performance and intriguing mechanical/chemical stability. However, its practical implementation remains very challenging primarily because of its undesirable swelling in an aqueous environment. Here, we demonstrated that dissociation of water molecules into H₃O⁺ and OH^– ions inside the interlayer gallery of a layered GO membrane can strongly affect its stability and performance. We reveal that H₃O⁺ and OH^– ions form clusters inside the GO laminates that impede the permeance of water and salt ions through the membrane. Dynamics of those clusters is sensitive to an external ac electric field, which can be used to tailor the membrane performance. The presence of H₃O⁺ and OH^– ions also leads to increased stability of the hydrogen bond (H-bond) network among the water molecules and the GO layers, which further reduces water permeance through the membrane, while crucially imparting stability to the layered GO membrane against undesirable swelling.