Water is an essential element for life. A minimum of 5L/day of drinking water is required for a person to survive with normal activities. [1] Currently, 2.1 billion people globally have limited access to safe drinking water. Additionally, about 6% of deaths in underdeveloped countries are caused by drinking unsafe water. [2] To address water scarcity, the research community has proposed a variety of solutions to alleviate the drinking water crisis, such as solar desalination, reverse osmosis (RO), atmos- pheric water harvesting, and capacitive deionization technology (CDI). However, the high energy consumption, low efficiency and/or high production cost of these technologies greatly hinder the future development of these devices. However, with the development of material science and nanotechnology, some profound changes are taking places in these technologies. This special issue features four review papers and three research papers that focus on solar desalination, atmospheric water harvesting and CDI for clean drinking water, which aim to fur- ther promote the development of related technologies.
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