Advances in Porous Functional Materials: From Atmospheric Water Harvesting to Sustainable Water‑Energy Applications

Dear Colleagues, 

Global freshwater scarcity has become one of the most urgent sustainability challenges, calling for innovative water‑energy coupling technologies independent of conventional water infrastructures. Porous functional materials, including metal‑organic frameworks, covalent organic frameworks, aerogels and composite porous gels, provide unique structural tunability for vapor sorption, photothermal conversion and interfacial mass‑heat transfer, offering promising pathways for atmospheric water harvesting, low‑grade waste‑heat utilization and other water‑energy‑related applications. Nevertheless, critical bottlenecks still remain: balancing high moisture uptake and low‑energy regeneration, improving long‑term cycling stability under practical arid conditions, and bridging material‑level performance to scalable device implementation. Further fundamental and applied investigations are required to accelerate real‑world deployment of these material systems.  This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate the most recent advances related to the design, mechanism understanding and application of porous functional materials toward sustainable water‑energy technologies. We invite contributions addressing material synthesis, interfacial physicochemical mechanisms, multi‑scale performance optimization, and prototype development for atmospheric moisture utilization. Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to, the following: Design and modification of novel porous sorbents (MOFs, COFs, aerogels, porous hydrogel composites). Interfacial physicochemical mechanisms for water vapor adsorption‑desorption. Enthalpy‑entropy regulation and hetero‑interface engineering for hygroscopic porous materials. Solar‑ or waste‑heat‑driven atmospheric water‑harvesting materials and devices. Multifunctional porous materials for water‑energy co‑generation and thermal management. Computational simulation, theoretical modelling and machine‑learning screening of porous water‑harvesting materials. Scalable fabrication, stability evaluation and practical‑system validation of porous functional materials.

Dr. Yanghui Luo
Guest Editor

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