Sometimes mother nature does it best.
The need for clean, cheap, disease-free drinking water is one of the greatest health needs in the world. Scientists have tried all sorts of materials but invariably run into issues with cost, durability, availability, scaleability, or something along those lines. This article reports on research into using xylem from coniferous trees was able to remove 99.9% of bacteria in samples of water.
It's not an area that we usually discuss in materials science because we're not necessarily building anything from the xylem, but being able to take advantage of a natural material's natural properties is every bit as important as being able to adapt that material for our use.
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