Developing new membranes with both high selectivity and permeability is critical in membrane science since conventional membranes are often limited by the trade-off between selectivity and permeability. In recent years, the emergence of advanced materials with accurate structures at atomic or molecular scale, such as metal organic framework, covalent organic framework, graphene, has accelerated the development of membranes, which benefits the precision of membrane structures. In this review, current state-of-the-art membranes are first reviewed and classified into three different types according to the structures of their building blocks, including laminar structured membranes, framework structured membranes and channel structured membranes, followed by the performance and applications for representative separations (liquid separation and gas separation) of these precisely designed membranes. Last, the challenges and opportunities of these advanced membranes are also discussed.
Keywords: channel structure; framework structure; laminar structure; precisely designed membrane.
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