Ultrastable ceramic-based metal–organic framework membranes with missing linkers for robust desalination

The rational design of high-performance desalination membranes is critical to enable sustainable water treatment applications. However, conventional polymeric membranes suffer from insufficient stability especially under harsh chemical conditions. Here we show a novel robust ceramic-based UiO-66 metal–organic framework nanoporous membrane molecularly engineered with missing linkers, enabling more challenging chemically harsh desalination applications. The membranes show competitive desalination performance, which is higher than most state-of-the-art asymmetric and thin-film composite polymeric osmotic membranes. Experimental and molecular simulation results indicate that introducing missing-linker defects substantially increases water flux, allowing faster transport of water clusters with a lower energy barrier via enlarging the pore size of metal–organic framework nanochannels. Notably, the UiO-66 membranes exhibit exceptional stability compared with polymeric membranes under high oxidizing (chlorine) and alkaline conditions and promising application potential in industrial wastewater treatment. Our work provides a new rational design of robust high-performance desalination membranes for expanded water treatment applications that are not feasible by conventional polymeric membranes.