A membrane that can remove salts from water more efficiently

ALAN TURING was no slouch. He laid the mathematical groundwork for modern computing. He led the successful effort to crack Germany’s Enigma code during the second world war. And he also, though it is less well known, made an important contribution to chemistry with a paper winningly entitled “The chemical basis of morphogenesis”. In it he described how the diffusion of two chemicals that react with each other can, in certain circumstances, produce complex patterns of blobs and striations. These patterns, now called “Turing structures”, bear an uncanny resemblance to many that are found in nature: a zebra’s stripes, for example, or a ladybird’s spots.

The extent to which such processes are involved in the embryonic development of animals is debated. But, on a more practical note, Zhang Lin of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and his colleagues now hope to turn Turing’s chemical insights to the task of improving desalination, a process that provides drinking water for around 300m people. To do so, they have made a membrane laced with microscopic Turing patterns that can remove salts from water up to four times faster than commercial alternatives. Their research is published this week in Science.