Over the past decades, much attention has been paid to develope novel approaches towards water treatment, in particular the membrane filtration, to deal with the severe environmental crisis. One of the research foci is the organic-inorganic composite membranes for their advantages from both polymers and inorganics. In this review, we focus on the composite porous membranes and outline the advances in this field. In recent years, numerous of methods have been developed to fabricate such membranes, including blending, in situ generation, surface modification, atomic layer deposition, and biomineralization. The membranes can be categorized into two models according to the distribution of inorganics in the membrane: the embedding model and enveloping model. In addition, we summarize the practical applications of organic-inorganic composite membranes in anti-fouling and anti-bacterial uses, oil/water separation, catalysis, absorption, battery separator and enzyme immobilization. We suggest the “enveloping model” a better choice to construct the novel organic-inorganic composite membranes with high performance for its high surface mineral coverage.

Contents
1 Introduction
2 Types and fabrication methods
2.1 “Embedding” model
2.2 “Enveloping” model
2.3 Comparison of two models
3 Applications of organic-inorganic porous membranes
3.1 Anti-fouling and anti-bacterial applications
3.2 Oil/water separation
3.3 Catalytic membranes
3.4 Absorption
3.5 Battery separator
3.6 Immobilization of enzymes
4 Conclusion and outlook