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Biomimetic high-flux proton pump constructed with asymmetric polymeric carbon nitride membrane

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Abstract

Biological proton pumps ferry protons in an active manner and have a high flux (a few to 10 protons/(s·nm2)). Integrating these features in an artificial membrane may open the way for a wide range of applications but it remains challenging. In this work, we employed a structural engineering strategy to construct an asymmetric photonic polymeric carbon nitride (C3N4) membrane that exhibited photo-driven high flux proton pumping performance. The ion transport path through the membrane is reminiscent of that in the high-flux asymmetric biological ion channel. In addition, it has a photonic structure that mimics the mosquito compound eyes with improved light adsorption. Finally, the asymmetric structure constitutes an isotype (n−n) heterojunction that enhances the separation of the light-induced electron-hole pairs. As a result, the membrane shows a flux of 89 µA/cm2 under 100 mW/cm2 white light illumination (approximately one sun), the highest ever reported. This translates to a pumping rate of ∼ 6 proton/(s·nm2), comparable to the biological counterpart. This work highlights the potential of multi-level structural engineering to construct high-performance bionic devices, and may find applications in solar energy harvesting and solar powered membrane process.

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Acknowledgements

J. L. and J. G. acknowledge Prof. Wei Lin and Xu Cai of Fuzhou University for helpful discussions. This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Nos. ZR2019ZD47, ZR2019JQ05, ZR2018MB018, and ZR202103010934), the Key R&D Projects of Shandong Province (No. 2022CXGC010302), the Education Department of Shandong Province (No. 2019KJC006), the Shandong Energy Institute (No. SEI202124), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 22175104 and 21802080).

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  1. Yizhu Zhang, Shangfa Pan, and Yuanyuan Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266042, China

    Yizhu Zhang, Yuanyuan Zhang, Xia Zhang & Jian Liu

  2. Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266101, China

    Shangfa Pan, Yuanyuan Zhang, Jian Liu & Jun Gao

  3. Shandong Energy Institute, Qingdao, 266101, China

    Shangfa Pan, Yuanyuan Zhang, Jian Liu & Jun Gao

  4. Physics of complex fluids, University of Twente, Enschede, 7522 NB, the Netherlands

    Shaoqiang Su

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  1. Yizhu Zhang
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  2. Shangfa Pan
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  3. Yuanyuan Zhang
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  5. Xia Zhang
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Correspondence to Jian Liu or Jun Gao.

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Zhang, Y., Pan, S., Zhang, Y. et al. Biomimetic high-flux proton pump constructed with asymmetric polymeric carbon nitride membrane. Nano Res. 16, 18–24 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4659-x

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