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Scalable Production and Covalent Functionalization of WS2 Nanosheets for Membrane Fabrication and Ion Separation.

Yuefeng Zhang,Mingzi Sun,Ruijie Yang,Ting Ying,Liang Mei,Ruixin Yan,Weikang Zheng,Honglu Hu,A. An,Bilu Liu,Damien Voiry,Jingyun Fang,Chuyang Y. Tang,Bolong Huang,Zhiyuan Zeng

Published 2026 in Nano letters (Print)

ABSTRACT

Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) membranes offer a promising solution to freshwater scarcity by desalinating seawater through ion blocking. However, research has largely focused on MoS2 due to its efficient exfoliation via n-butyl lithium intercalation, unlike other TMDs. Here, we report scalable production of WS2 nanosheets by increasing the Li+ intercalation driving force (increasing current density up to 10 mA g-1 and decreasing cutoff voltage down to 0.7 V) of the electrochemical intercalation method. WS2 membranes were then fabricated by organohalide functionalization followed by vacuum filtration. The resulting membranes exhibit a high rejection rate of up to 90% for divalent and trivalent cations. The selectivity for monovalent/divalent and monovalent/trivalent cations reaches up to 8.7 and 9.9, respectively, in both single and binary cation solutions. Theoretical calculations reveal that the improved rejection rates of divalent and trivalent cations compared to those of monovalent cations originate from the stronger binding preferences of monovalent cations with functionalized WS2 membranes.

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