Desalination is one of the solutions to the problem of freshwater scarcity, along with environmental remediation technologies and sustainable conservation policies ( 1, 2). They show also excellent performance in the purification of low-salinity water under low-pressure conditions (6 bar of applied pressure) with fluxes up to 35 L⋅m −2⋅h −1 and 97.5 to 99.3% observed rejection.Ĭompetition over increasingly contaminated freshwater resources during the last decades has made the availability to safe drinking water a serious global challenge for the 21st century. The optimized bioinspired membranes achieve an unprecedented improvement, resulting in more than twice (up to 6.9 L⋅m −2⋅h −1⋅bar −1) water permeance of analogous commercial membranes, while maintaining excellent NaCl rejection (>99.5%). The performance of the membranes is evaluated by cross-flow filtration under real reverse osmosis conditions (15 to 20 bar of applied pressure) by filtration of brackish feed streams. In particular, we explore the best combination between I-quartet AWC and m-phenylenediamine (MPD) monomer to achieve a seamless incorporation of AWC in a defect-free polyamide membrane. Herein, we demonstrate that self-assembled imidazole-quartet (I-quartet) AWCs are macroscopically incorporated within industrially relevant reverse osmosis membranes. Promising strategies exploiting the AWC with angstrom-scale selectivity have revealed their impressive performances when embedded in bilayer membranes. Inspired by biological proteins, artificial water channels (AWCs) have been proposed to overcome the permeability/selectivity trade-off of desalination processes. Membrane-based technologies have a tremendous role in water purification and desalination.