Functional Materials for Water Purification and Resource Recovery
A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Porous Materials".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 November 2026 | Viewed by 132
Editors
Interests: functional materials for sustainability
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: electrochemical separation materials
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Clean water and critical resource recovery are central to sustainable development, yet existing processes often face trade-offs between selectivity, energy use, and long-term stability in complex real streams. Rapid progress in functional materials—including ion-selective electrodes and membranes, sorbents, catalysts, photothermal/photocatalytic structures, and hybrid composites—is enabling new routes for water purification and resource recovery across desalination, wastewater reuse, and brine mining. This Special Issue welcomes contributions on material-enabled technologies such as electrochemical separations (CDI, intercalation, and electrodialysis), reactive electrochemical treatment (electro-oxidation, electro-Fenton, and disinfection), solar-driven evaporation and membrane distillation, atmospheric water harvesting, adsorption/ion exchange, and advanced oxidation. Topics of interest include interfacial chemistry and transport, selectivity and antifouling, stability and regeneration, device/reactor engineering, benchmarking and standardized metrics (energy, productivity, recovery, and lifetime), and validation in real waters. Studies connecting materials design to scalable modules, TEA/LCA, and field-relevant demonstrations are particularly encouraged.
Dr. Bo Chen
Dr. Yang Wang
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- solar evaporation
- atmospheric water harvesting
- electrochemical water treatment
- membrane
- adsorption
- resource recovery
- water purification
- functional materials
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

