Boyou Wang, Wenxia Xu, Mengya Zhang, Jing Pan, Cong Wang, Qitao Zhou, Fan Xia
emissions and high resistance to weather and other external factors. Therefore, it holds great promise as a potential renewable energy source in the context of carbon neutrality. However, there are still numerous challenges before the relevant technology can be practically applied. Among them, large-area and reproducible fabrication of membrane materials and overcoming the performance degradation caused by the ionic concentration polarization (ICP) effect at the interface between the membrane material and salt solution during system operation are key research focuses. Existing reviews primarily focus on the latest advancements in the field of material preparation. This review, however, starts from the approaches to mitigate the ICP effect. It categorizes the existing methods for ICP mitigating into physical means and material design strategies. Furthermore, it summarizes the matching patterns among nanopore size, charge characteristics during material design, and concentration gradients during operation. We believe that this review can offer valuable guidance to relevant researchers and facilitate the progression of osmotic energy conversion technology toward practical applications.