Sandwich Photothermal Membrane with Confined Hierarchical Carbon Cells Enabling High‐Efficiency Solar Steam Generation

Solar‐driven vaporization is a sustainable solution to water and energy scarcity. However, most of the present evaporators are still suffering from inefficient utilization of converted thermal energy. Herein, a universal sandwich membrane strategy is demonstrated by confining the hierarchical porous carbon cells in two energy barriers to obtain a high‐efficiency evaporator with a rapid water evaporation rate of 1.87 kg m^?2 h^?1 under 1 sun illumination, which is among the highest performance for carbon‐based and wood‐based evaporators. The significantly enhanced evaporation rate is mainly attributed to the inherently optimized porous evaporation mode derived from the hierarchical hollow structures of pollen carbon cells, and the synergistically regulated water transporting and thermal management performance of the sandwich membrane. Moreover, the constructed sandwich membrane also exhibits excellent self‐regenerating performance in simulated seawater and high salinity water. The developed device can maintain an average evaporation rate of 4.3 L m^?2 day^?1 in a 25 day consecutive outdoor test.     

Highly Flexible and Efficient Solar Steam Generation Device

Solar steam generation with subsequent steam recondensation has been regarded as one of the most promising techniques to utilize the abundant solar energy and sea water or other unpurified water through water purification, desalination, and distillation. Although tremendous efforts have been dedicated to developing high‐efficiency solar steam generation devices, challenges remain in terms of the relatively low efficiency, complicated fabrications, high cost, and inability to scale up. Here, inspired by the water transpiration behavior of trees, the use of carbon nanotube (CNT)‐modified flexible wood membrane (F‐Wood/CNTs) is demonstrated as a flexible, portable, recyclable, and efficient solar steam generation device for low‐cost and scalable solar steam generation applications. Benefitting from the unique structural merits of the F‐Wood/CNTs membrane—a black CNT‐coated hair‐like surface with excellent light absorbability, wood matrix with low thermal conductivity, hierarchical micro‐ and nanochannels for water pumping and escaping, solar steam generation device based on the F‐Wood/CNTs membrane demonstrates a high efficiency of 81% at 10 kW cm^?2, representing one of the highest values ever‐reported. The nature‐inspired design concept in this study is straightforward and easily scalable, representing one of the most promising solutions for renewable and portable solar energy generation and other related phase‐change applications.     

亚微米级Ti4O7的制备及其光热转换性能

光热转换是一种有效的太阳能利用技术,其效率主要取决于光热转换材料的光吸收能力。本研究通过低成本球磨法制备亚微米级的Ti₄O₇,采用扫描电镜、激光粒度仪、X射线衍射仪、差式扫描热分析仪表征其微观形貌、粒径大小、组成和比热容,用紫外-可见-近红外(UV-Vis-NIR)分光光度计和太阳光模拟器分别测试其光吸收能力和光热转换性能。结果表明,通过球磨法成功制备出粒径约0.35 μm的亚微米Ti₄O₇粉末,其太阳光全光谱吸收能力约89.5%,光热转换效率约73.7%。当亚微米级Ti₄O₇漂浮在水面时,太阳光水蒸汽产生效率提高至无光热材料条件下的2.15倍。因此,亚微米级的Ti₄O₇作为光热转换材料具有很大应用潜力。     

Improved Photo-Excited Carriers Transportation of WS2-O-Doped-Graphene Heterostructures for Solar Steam Generation (Small 19/2023)

Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides and graphene have revealed promising applications in optoelectronic and energy storage and conversion. However, there are rare reports of modifying the light-to-heat transformation via preparing their heterostructures for solar steam generation. In this work, commercial WS₂ and sucrose are utilized as precursors to produce 2D WS₂-O-doped-graphene heterostructures (WS₂-O-graphene) for solar water evaporation. The WS₂-O-graphene evaporators demonstrate excellent average water evaporation rate (2.11 kg m⁻² h⁻¹) and energy efficiency (82.2%), which are 1.3- and 1.2-fold higher than WS₂ and O-doped graphene-based evaporators, respectively. Furthermore, for the real seawater with different pH values (pH 1 and 12) and rhodamine B pollutants, the WS₂-O-graphene evaporators show great average evaporation rates (≈2.08 and 2.09 kg m⁻² h⁻¹, respectively) for producing freshwater with an extremely low-grade of dye residual and nearly neutral pH values. More interestingly, due to the self-storage water ability of WS₂-O-graphene evaporators, water evaporation can be implemented without the presence of bulk water. As a result, the evaporation rate reaches 3.23 kg m⁻² h⁻¹, which is ≈1.5 times higher than the regular solar water evaporation system. This work provides a new approach for preparing 2D transition metal dichalcogenides and graphene heterostructures for efficient solar water evaporation.