Emergence of MXene and MXene–Polymer Hybrid Membranes as Future‐ Environmental Remediation Strategies

The continuous deterioration of the environment due to extensive industrialization and urbanization has raised the requirement to devise high‐performance environmental remediation technologies. Membrane technologies, primarily based on conventional polymers, are the most commercialized air, water, solid, and radiation‐based environmental remediation strategies. Low stability at high temperatures, swelling in organic contaminants, and poor selectivity are the fundamental issues associated with polymeric membranes restricting their scalable viability. Polymer‐metal‐carbides and nitrides (MXenes) hybrid membranes possess remarkable physicochemical attributes, including strong mechanical endurance, high mechanical flexibility, superior adsorptive behavior, and selective permeability, due to multi‐interactions between polymers and MXene's surface functionalities. This review articulates the state‐of‐the‐art MXene–polymer hybrid membranes, emphasizing its fabrication routes, enhanced physicochemical properties, and improved adsorptive behavior. It comprehensively summarizes the utilization of MXene–polymer hybrid membranes for environmental remediation applications, including water purification, desalination, ion‐separation, gas separation and detection, containment adsorption, and electromagnetic and nuclear radiation shielding. Furthermore, the review highlights the associated bottlenecks of MXene–Polymer hybrid‐membranes and its possible alternate solutions to meet industrial requirements. Discussed are opportunities and prospects related to MXene–polymer membrane to devise intelligent and next‐generation environmental remediation strategies with the integration of modern age technologies of internet‐of‐things, artificial intelligence, machine‐learning, 5G‐communication and cloud‐computing are elucidated. 2D MXenes–polymer hybrid based membranes possess colossal latent to transform the environmental remediation technologies owing to their remarkable physicochemical and sustainable attributes, facilitating attainment of smart, flexible, high adsorption efficacies, cost‐effective, energy‐efficient, compact, portable, point‐of‐solution, scavenging, self‐powered, multifunctional, integrated on a single membrane supported by advanced technologies including machine learning, artificial intelligence, 5G wireless communication, cloud computing, and internet‐of‐things.