Emerging Functional Materials: Synthetic Paradigms and Innovative Applications in Water Desalination, Wastewater Purification and Resource Recovery

The global water shortage and environmental pollution problems are becoming increasingly serious. There is an urgent need to develop efficient and sustainable functional materials to solve the bottleneck in the field of water treatment. Emerging functional materials (such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs), nanocomposites, etc.) have shown great potential in water desalination, pollutant adsorption/degradation, ion selective separation and resource recovery due to their designability, high selectivity and environmental response characteristics. However, improving the stability, scalability and practical application efficiency of materials through synthetic paradigm innovation remains a core challenge in this field. This Special Issue aims to bring together the cutting-edge results of scientists in material creation, mechanism exploration and engineering transformation, and promote the paradigm innovation of water treatment technology.
In this Special Issue, we focus on the following directions:
1) Development of new bionic/green synthesis strategies;
2) Analysis of material-pollutant interaction mechanisms (such as interface behavior and catalytic pathways);
3) Design of intelligent response systems for practical scenarios (such as light/electrically driven desalination, and self-healing membranes);
4) Resource recovery and energy synergy technologies (such as lithium/rare earth extraction and wastewater hydrogen production).
We sincerely invite original research, reviews and forward-looking perspectives, especially interdisciplinary research (such as AI-assisted material design and microfluidic device integration). We aim to promote materials from lab to engineering and assist in the construction of a water-energy-resource recycling system under the goal of “carbon neutrality”.

Green synthesis, sea water desalination, wastewater purifying, resource recovery.

15 Sep 2025