Abstract: In the past decade, mussel-bioinspired surface chemistry has been an interdisciplinary research hotspot in material science, chemistry and biomedicine etc.Dopamine behaves like mussel foot proteins and is able to develop into polydopamine (PDA) nanocoating and nanoparticles with various functions by complicated oxidation, self-polymerization and further self-assembly.PDA nanomaterials have found a variety of applications in separation, adsorption, biomedical and bioadhesives etc.In recent years, we have made many efforts on the preparation and structure control of mussel-bioinspired separation materials.In our works, for the first time, mussel-inspired PDA deposition was introduced to surface construction and functionalization of polymeric porous membranes.A simple model on dopamine evolution and deposition on solid-liquid interface was proposed.Furthermore, a novel thin-film composite nanofiltration (NF) membrane with PDA coating as the active separation layer was developed.These works pioneered a new and simple way of membrane surface functionalization and NF membrane preparation.The aim of this article is to review and highlight the progress of mussel-bioinspired separation materials, especially polymeric separation membranes.