Membranes for Health and Environmental Applications

Dear Colleagues,

We are very pleased to invite you to submit a paper to the special issue “membranes for health and environmental applications” of a new journal Membranes.

Membranes for health and environmental applications are playing an essential role in our daily life. For example, membranes are routinely used for medical care and individual protection, such as wound dressing, dialysis, tissue engineering, and controlled release of drugs. Membranes are also used for environmental cleaning and protection, such as filtration media for water purification (e.g., microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis) and air filtration. With rapid population growth and increasing environmental concerns on earth, the future applications of membrane materials for health and environmental protection will be even more important.

There are different kinds of membrane materials, including inorganic membranes (e.g., ceramic and metal), organic membranes (e.g., polymer) and hybrid membranes containing both inorganic and organic components.  The structures of these membranes can also be different, ranging from non-directional structures (e.g., bi-continuous spinodal and non-woven fibrous structures, or nonporous membranes by means of solution and diffusion mechanism) to directional structures (e.g., microphases in block copolymer and directional cavity in nanocomposites) at different length scales.  The two most important properties of a membrane are selectivity and permeation rate.  At times, these two properties seem to be at opposing ends, but recent studies indicate that some membranes with high permeability can also retain good selectivity.  Such advances can greatly improve the efficiency of separation leading to breakthroughs in performance and operations.

This special issue will focus on the recent research and development of advanced membranes for health and environmental applications with the following themes:

• new process development of advanced membranes for health and environmental applications
• new membrane materials for water purification (e.g., microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, reverse osmosis and antifouling membranes)
• new membrane materials for air filtration (e.g., industrial air filtration, face masks)
• new membrane materials for medical care (e.g., wound dressing, antimicrobial scaffolds, dialysis, blood filtration, tissue engineering and drug delivery)

However, we strongly encourage the manuscripts to emphasize one or more of the following aspects of the studies:

• synthesis or fabrication of new membrane materials with controlled nanostructures and porosity
• theoretical development or simulation of membranes formation or transport phenomena
• experimental results on membrane performance (e.g., permeation and selectivity) in relevant conditions for health and environmental applications
• membrane structures determined with advanced characterization tools
• relationships between process, structure and property in membrane fabrication
• tailored membrane functionality in biomedical applications
• molecular and scaffold interactions and issues of fouling

Prof. Dr. Benjamin S. Hsiao
Prof. Dr. Bin Ding
Guest Editors