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Access to clean water that is safe and readily available for drinking, domestic use, hygiene, and food production is an essential requirement for health, well being, and societal development as a whole. However this fundamental need is not met for large parts of the world’s population. It is therefore unsurprising that access to clean water has been recognized as a sustainable development goal (SDG) by the United Nations. This Collection features recent developments in materials science and engineering that can offer solutions to improve our capabilities in water treatment and water harvesting technologies, from fundamental investigations of materials properties to practical demonstrations of their applications.
In this Collection, Nature Communications, Communications Chemistry, Communications Materials, Communications Engineering and Nature Water welcome submissions that report advances in water filtration and desalination, water pollution remediation and water harvesting with demonstrated potential for improved application.
The efficient encapsulation of guests by coordination cages in the solid state is prevented by their flexibility, dynamicity, and metal-ligand bond reversibility. Here, the authors report coordination cages integrated into poly(ionic liquid)s to control swelling and mechanical properties of the gels and develop efficient and regenerable supramolecular separation materials.
Graphene oxide is a promising material for molecular separation technologies. Here, the authors propose a realistic staggered stacking structure that plays a crucial role in H/D recognition in water adsorption, as well as high mobilities of water.
A robust and sustainable membrane anti-biofouling approach is needed to ensure long-term continuous and efficient water treatment. A dynamic membrane with sufficient and reliable active sites to load anti-biofouling agents in the membraneʼs internal structure and reload them after the release process is proposed with the goal of sustainable membrane biofouling control.
Fabric distillation is proposed as a thermal desalination technique that employs hydrophilic fabrics to separate the vapour water from the feed water through capillary and Coandă effects.
Membrane desalination is a promising technology for producing freshwater from saline waters. Submicrometre-thick and nanopore-structured graphdiyne membranes on porous Cu hollow fibres accomplish nearly perfect NaCl rejections and ultrahigh water permeabilities.
Reverse osmosis of seawater is a popular though energy demanding process to produce freshwater. Interfacing reverse osmosis membranes with solar steam generation shows potential for a more efficient desalination process.
Membrane distillation is an emerging desalination technology to obtain freshwater from saline based on low-grade energy. Here the authors report on novel superhydrophobic hierarchical porous membranes with enhanced distillation flux suitable for desalination or wastewater treatment.
Developing efficient separation methods for oily wastewater holds significant global importance. In this study, the authors combine supewettability and bio-inspired topological structures to demonstrate a dual-bionic superwetting gear system with liquid directional steering to achieve oil-water separation.
While passive solar-driven evaporative systems promise higher economic and environmental sustainability in water treatment, many challenges remain for their effective adoption. Here, the author identifies three main pillars and corresponding issues which future research should focus on to bring these technologies to the next maturity level.
Minimizing membrane fouling is critical for their continuous and efficient operation. Here, authors demonstrate a wrinkled-pattern microparticles-decorated membrane surface can increase contact area with water molecules, expand steric hindrance, and inhibit adhesion and deposition of oil, achieving efficient migratory viscous crude oil antifouling.
The performance of membrane desalination of seawater is hampered by fouling. Here the authors develop smart gating hybrid membranes by surface coating with polymer-embedded thermosalient crystals. These membranes enhance pure water flux by over 40% in saltwater desalination by osmotic distillation.
'Covalent modification, while tuning the channel size and functionality, disrupts the structure of 2D membranes. Here the authors demonstrate controllable and selective mass transport, via nondisruptive non-covalent modification of sub-1-nm MXene channels, enabled by nanoconfinement effect.
Porous or crystalline materials are generally employed as adsorbents for environmental remediation. Here the authors employ nonporous and amorphous covalent organic superphane cages for aqueous iodine adsorption achieving good selectivity, high adsorption capability and fast kinetics.
Membranes with fast and selective separation of ions are universally desired in many applications. Here, authors inspired by biological potassium ion channels have constructed an MXene based biomimetic ion channel membrane to achieve efficient separation of ions.
Microporous organic nanotubes (MONs) hold considerable promise for designing molecular-sieving membranes because of high microporosity, customizable chemical functionalities, and favorable polymer affinity. Here, the authors report the usage of MONs derived from covalent organic frameworks to engineer 15-nm-thick microporous membranes via interfacial polymerization.
Membranes with precise ion-ion separation are critical for sustainable water treatment. Here, authors demonstrated controlled construction of a nanofiltration membrane with fast permeation and high Cl-/SO42- selectivity by simultaneous spatial and temporal control of interfacial polymerization.
Ion separation membranes are of importance for a range of applications, including water treatment, raw material recovery, gas separation, and fuel cells, but traditional research and development methods can be expensive and time-consuming. Here, the authors review the capabilities and limitations of artificial intelligence in the design of high performing ion-selective membranes.
Jan Kloppenborg Møller & Goran Goranović and colleagues introduce a data-driven twin methodology which balances physical knowledge with uncertainty quantifications. The approach makes it suited to application of real world problems with inherent unknowns. They demonstrate its application in the modelling and control of membrane water ultrafiltration
Harvesting osmotic energy in real world high-salinity solutions poses great challenges, authors propose nanofluidic membranes with a dual separation mechanism based on vermiculite nanosheets with an isomorphic substitution structure, showing excellent energy conversion in hypersaline environments.
Micropollutant removal in polymeric nanofiltration membranes is difficult to characterise due to pore heterogeneity. A force interplay framework was developed to describe adsorption in VaCNT membranes with defined nanopores, providing insight for the design of membranes with improved selectivity.
The permeation pathway length and tortuosity of nanosheet membranes are usually extremely large. Here, a facile, scalable, and controllable nanowire electrochemical concept is reported for perforating and modifying nanosheets to shorten permeation pathway and adjust transport property.
Clean water and sanitation are major global challenges. Here, Prof. Zhang’s group developed a two-dimensional cobalt-functionalized vermiculite membrane, which overcame the persistent membrane permeability-selectivity trade-off in water purification.
The structures and properties of membranes depend strongly on their preparation methods. Here, the authors present a plasma-assisted nonsolvent-induced phase separation method that allows to tailor the physicochemical and electrical characteristics of PVDF membranes for various applications.
With porous structure and photothermal conversion performance, Cu-porphyrin framework membranes exhibit high efficiency in the extraction of electrical energy from salt solutions, opening avenues for renewable energy.