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Plasmonic nanoheating for versatile water purification membranes

Nature Sustainability (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Global water scarcity motivates sustainable clean water production from non-traditional water sources. While existing reverse osmosis (RO) membranes dominate seawater desalination, they are far from ideal for purifying diverse water sources due to inadequate removal of various low-molecular-weight contaminants. Here we overcome this limitation by developing ultraselective polyamide RO membranes via in situ interfacial plasmonic nanoheating integrated interfacial polymerization (IP). The rapid localized heating at the nano-interface of IP boosts the reactivity of monomers, improves the local mass transfer of amine monomers, and facilitates interfacial degassing/vaporization. Consequently, the resultant RO membrane, featuring highly crosslinked polyamide with extensive internal nanovoids, exhibits superior removal for a wide spectrum of toxic and hard-to-remove contaminants found in different water sources, revealing transformative potential for various water treatment scenarios. It also shows a transcendent desalination performance (water permeance of 3.4 l m−2 h−1 bar−1 and NaCl rejection of 99.7%), which further enables efficient desalination of natural seawater for high-quality freshwater, indicating great promise for practical applications. Our study opens a route to develop high-performance RO membranes for effectively purifying diverse water sources towards sustainable clean water production.

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Fig. 1: Schematic diagrams of membrane fabrication and characterization of plasmon resonance of AgNPs.
Fig. 2: Numerical simulations of temperature distribution and fluid velocity vectors in the vicinity of the AgNPs within 2 s.
Fig. 3: Nanostructure, properties and performance of the fabricated polyamide RO membranes.
Fig. 4: Performance of IPH-IP RO membrane for treating natural seawater and removing a wide spectrum of contaminants.

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All data are available in this Article and its Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by grants from the Research Grants Council (GRF HKU 17204220 to C.Y.T.) and the Innovation and Technology Fund (GHP/181/20GD to C.Y.T.) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China. Partial support was also received from the Seed Funding for Strategic Interdisciplinary Research Scheme (102010174 to C.Y.T.) and Outstanding Researcher Award (102010224 to C.Y.T.) at The University of Hong Kong, and the Scientific Research Startup Fund (QD2023012C to H.G.) of Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Menachem Elimelech

    Present address: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

  2. Menachem Elimelech

    Present address: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Membrane-based Environmental and Sustainable Technology (MembEST) Group, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, China

    Qimao Gan, Wenyu Liu, Qian Xiao, Zhe Yang, Hao Guo & Chuyang Y. Tang

  2. Institute of Environment and Ecology, Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, China

    Hao Guo

  3. Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Menachem Elimelech

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  1. Qimao Gan
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  5. Hao Guo
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  7. Chuyang Y. Tang
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Contributions

Q.G. and H.G. developed the concept and designed the experiments and simulations. W.L. conducted the detection of various micropollutants. Q.X. performed the detection of anions. Z.Y. provided help with the fabrication and experiments. C.Y.T. secured funding and supervised the research project. Q.G., H.G., M.E. and C.Y.T. wrote and revised the manuscript. All co-authors participated in discussions and provided feedback on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Hao Guo, Menachem Elimelech or Chuyang Y. Tang.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Zhongyi Jiang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Gan, Q., Liu, W., Xiao, Q. et al. Plasmonic nanoheating for versatile water purification membranes. Nat Sustain (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01636-3

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