Water shortage has always been a considerable challenge facing humanity, and desalination is considered one of the most promising solutions to the global freshwater resource crisis. Traditional desalination technologies often suffer from high energy consumption and high investment costs. Researchers focus on desalination membrane technology because of its advantages of energy saving, environmental protection, simple operation, cost-effectiveness, and so on. This article reviews the current status of research on nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, metal organic frameworks, molybdenum disulfide, and covalent organic frameworks and aquaporin for seawater desalination. It can be seen that these nanomaterials are widely used in membrane for reverse osmosis, forward osmosis, nanofiltration, membrane distillation, and capacitive deionization (CDI). Therefore, the membrane desalination technology is briefly classified and introduced. According to this review, the current exploration of nanomembrane materials for seawater desalination mainly focuses on CDI. This review aims to better provide nanomembrane options for realizing cost-effective and industrial-scale commercial seawater desalination technologies. It prospects the future development direction and challenges of nanomaterials in seawater desalination.

水资源短缺一直是人类面临的重大挑战，海水淡化被认为是解决全球淡水资源危机最有希望的解决方案之一。传统的海水淡化技术往往受到高能耗和高投资成本的困扰。海水淡化膜技术因其节能、环保、操作简单、成本效益等优点而受到研究人员的关注。本文综述了纳米材料如碳纳米管、石墨烯、用于海水淡化的金属有机骨架、二硫化钼和共价有机骨架和水通道蛋白。可以看出，这些纳米材料被广泛应用于反渗透、正渗透、纳滤、膜蒸馏和电容去离子（CDI）的膜中。因此，对膜法海水淡化技术进行简单的分类介绍。根据这篇综述，目前对用于海水淡化的纳米膜材料的探索主要集中在CDI上。本综述旨在更好地为实现具有成本效益和工业规模的商业海水淡化技术提供纳米膜选择。展望了纳米材料在海水淡化中的未来发展方向和挑战。