Bioinspired vertical macrocycle nanoarchitecture membranes for high‐efficiency organic molecule desalination

Abstract Nanofiltration, the leading technology for desalination and industrial water treatment processes, suffers from low permeability and solute–solute selectivity. Inspired by biological cell membranes, we herein report an effective and scalable construction strategy of highly permselective membranes for organic molecules desalination by incorporating vertically aligned macrocycle supramolecular nanochannels into the interfacial polymerized network. The macrocycle supramolecular nanoarchitecture can significantly improve the membrane permeance as well as molecules‐ions selectivity due to its well‐defined cavity structure and low tortuosity. The monovalent Cl − ion and water can freely pass through the membrane while divalent SO 4 2− and organic molecules are blocked. Furthermore, unprecedentedly high separation performance of organic molecule desalination is achieved, significantly exceeding the permeance‐selectivity upper‐bound of the state‐of‐the‐art membranes. Our work offers a facile biomimetic strategy that can be extended to the rational design of a large family of artificial nanochannel membranes as a sustainable technology for resource recovery and separation processes.