The recent paper More resilient polyester membranes for high-performance reverse osmosis desalination was published in Science.
Reverse osmosis membranes have been dominated by polyamide chemistry, which has sufficient performance in terms of water permeability and salt rejection but is vulnerable to degradation in the presence of chlorine or other strong oxidants. Polyesters are not typically used for water filtration membranes because they suffer from hydrolytic degradation when immersed in aqueous solution. Yao et al. show that the polymerization of 3,5-dihydroxy-4-methylbenzoic acid with trimesoyl chloride yields a polymer membrane with impressive resistance to hydrolytic degradation in acidic or basic conditions (up to pH 9) and a complete resistance to chlorine.