Achieving efficient solar steam generation under natural sunlight has huge potential for sewage purification and seawater desalination. Plasmonic resonance has been extensively exploited for enhancing and extending the range of optical absorption. Until now, most reported broadband plasmonic solar absorbers have been designed by compact aggregation or engineering plasmonic architectures. In this work, we develop a new plasmonic absorber using gold nanostructures with the shape of a trepang (nano-trepang). By rationally regulating anisotropy at the single nanoparticle level, the nano-trepang shows good optical absorption over the entire solar spectrum (92.9%) with no requirement of engineering nanoparticle aggregation or constructing plasmonic architectures. The nano-trepang was then loaded into a polymeric aerogel and the network showed an excellent solar-to-vapor energy conversion efficiency of 79.3%. Under 1 sun AM1.5 G irradiation, a stable solar evaporation rate of 2.7 kg m⁻² h⁻¹ can be achieved, with high performance anti-salt precipitation in practical seawater steam generation. This work shows a broadband plasmonic absorber with aggregation-independent performance for highly efficient solar stream generation and provides a new strategy for practical solar desalination.

中文翻译：

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一种宽带聚集无关的等离子体吸收器，可高效产生太阳能蒸汽

在自然阳光下实现高效的太阳能蒸汽产生具有巨大的潜力，可用于污水净化和海水淡化。等离子体共振已被广泛地用于增强和扩展光吸收范围。迄今为止，大多数报道的宽带等离子太阳能吸收器都是通过紧凑的聚集或工程等离子体系结构设计的。在这项工作中，我们开发了一种新的等离子体吸收器，该吸收器使用了具有trepang（纳米-trepang）形状的金纳米结构。通过在单个纳米粒子水平上合理地控制各向异性，纳米色胶在整个太阳光谱（92.9％）上显示出良好的光吸收，而无需工程化纳米粒子的聚集或构建等离激元体系结构。然后将纳米色胶装填到聚合物气凝胶中，该网络显示出极佳的79.3％的太阳到蒸气能量转换效率。在1个AM1.5 G太阳辐射下，稳定的太阳蒸发速率为2.7 kg m^-2 h ^-1可以实现，并且在实际的海水蒸汽产生中具有高效的防盐沉淀作用。这项工作显示了具有与聚集无关的性能的宽带等离子体吸收器，可高效产生太阳能流，并为实际的太阳能脱盐提供了新的策略。