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Hierarchical structures hydrogel evaporator and superhydrophilic water collect device for efficient solar steam evaporation

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Abstract

Efficient light absorption and trapping are of vital importance for the solar water evaporation by hydrogel-based photothermal conversion materials. Conventional strategies are focused on the development of the composition and structure of the hydrogel's internal network. In our point of view, the importance of the surface structure of hydrogel has usually been underestimated or ignored. Here inspired by the excellent absorbance and water transportation ability of biological surface structure, the hierarchical structured hydrogel evaporators (HSEs) increased the light absorption, trapping, water transportation and water-air interface, which is the beneficial photothermal conversion and water evaporation. The HSEs showed a rapid evaporation rate of 1.77 kg·m-2·h-1 at about 92% energy efficiency under one sun (1 kW·m-2). Furthermore, the superhydrophilic window device was used in this work to collect the condensed water, which avoids the light-blocking caused by the water mist formed by the small droplets and the problem of the droplets stick on the device dropping back to the bulk water. Integrated with the excellent photothermal conversion hydrogel and superhydrophilic window equipment, this work provides efficient evaporation and desalination of hydrogel-based solar evaporators in practical large-scale applications.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Cunming Yu and Dr. Xiao Xiao for providing COMSLO simulation. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar (No. 21725401), the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFA0207800), the 111 project (B14009), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Bio-inspired Smart Interfacial Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Wenwei Lei, Lie Chen, Kesong Liu & Mingjie Liu

  2. Photocatalysis International Research Center, Tokyo University of Science, 2641 Yamazaki, Noda, Chiba, 278-8510, Japan

    Wenwei Lei, Sovann Khan, Norihiro Suzuki, Chiaki Terashima & Akira Fujishima

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  1. Wenwei Lei
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Correspondence to Chiaki Terashima, Kesong Liu or Mingjie Liu.

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Hierarchical structures hydrogel evaporator and superhydrophilic water collect device for efficient solar steam evaporation

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Lei, W., Khan, S., Chen, L. et al. Hierarchical structures hydrogel evaporator and superhydrophilic water collect device for efficient solar steam evaporation. Nano Res. 14, 1135–1140 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-3162-5

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