Abstract
The increasing global reliance on alternative water sources underscores the critical need for enhanced desalination efficacy. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs), with their ordered porosity and tunable architectures, hold immense potential for next-generation desalination membranes. However, current COF membranes often fail in efficient seawater desalination due to pore sizes largely exceeding hydrated monovalent ion dimensions. Here we present a structurally stable, ultramicroporous COF membrane for low-pressure reverse osmosis (RO) desalination, engineered through a hydrogen-bond fortification strategy. Rational introduction of phenolic hydroxyl adjacent to aldehyde moieties yielded β-ketoenamine configurations enriched with hydrogen bonds, promoting AB-stacking and enhanced crystallinity in Tp-Bth COF membranes. The resultant COF membranes achieved 99.6% sodium chloride rejection with 1.7 L m−2 h−1 bar−1 water permeability at 15 bar, demonstrating high-performance low-pressure RO desalination. Notably, these membranes exhibited high acid resistance, retaining their initial performance after 30 days in a solution at pH 3. This work demonstrates a hydrogen-bond-mediated strategy to precisely tailor COF pore architecture for high-performance desalination.
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The authors declare that all data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and its supplementary information files or available from the corresponding author upon request
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52573238, 92475120), the Outstanding Youth Fund of Henan Scientific Committee (252300421182), Science and Technology Innovation Leading Talent Support Program of Henan Province (254200510023), and Jiangsu Future Membrane Technology Innovation Center (BM2021804). The characterizations and simulations were measured in the Center of Advanced Analysis and Computational Science at Zhengzhou University and the National Supercomputing Center in Zhengzhou, respectively.
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J.Z. conceived the idea and designed the experiments. Y.Zhou. and G.H. performed the material synthesis, characterization, and performance tests. Y. Zhou, J.Y., X.Z., J.H., X.C., and S.S. carried out the data analysis. All authors discussed the results. Y.Zhang, B.V., and J.Z. contributed to writing the manuscript.
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Zhou, Y., Hu, G., Yuan, J. et al. Ultramicroporous covalent organic framework membranes with fortified hydrogen-bond networks for high-performance desalination. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69779-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69779-1
