Chiral membranes for enantiomer separation: A comprehensive review

• The application of chiral membranes in enantiomer separation is reviewed in this paper. • The requirements, parameters, synthesis strategy, separation process and mechanism of chiral separation membranes are described. • Rapidly growing star material such as chiral graphene, CMOF and common materials such as chiral polymers are outlined in detail in the field of chiral membranes. • The current challenges and future prospects in enantiomer separation of chiral membranes are systematically analyzed. Chirality is a basic property of nature. Chiral compounds are widely used in medicine. The pharmacological action of enantiomers in human body varies widely or even opposites. Therefore, the purity of chiral compounds plays an important role in human health and safety. Enantiomer separation is a necessary process to obtain pure chiral compounds. How to efficiently separate enantiomers has been a hot research topic in the world. Chiral membrane separation has many advantages and has great potential in enantiomer separation. The key to chiral membrane separation is the development of membrane materials. At present, many promising new materials have emerged in the field of chiral membrane separation. Unfortunately, systematic reviews of chiral membrane separation are few and far between due to the wide range of disciplines involved. Therefore, Based on chiral membrane materials and starting from the mechanism of chiral membrane separation, this paper systematically describes the research progress in the chiral separation of graphene material membrane, metal–organic framework membrane and polymer membrane. In addition, the challenges and prospects of chiral membrane separation are analyzed. It is hoped that it can be helpful for the further study of chiral membrane separation.