National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Collaborative Innovation Centre of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China.
Adv Mater. 2017 Jul;29(28). doi: 10.1002/adma.201606762. Epub 2017 May 18.
Solar steam generation is emerging as a promising technology, for its potential in harvesting solar energy for various applications such as desalination and sterilization. Recent studies have reported a variety of artificial structures that are designed and fabricated to improve energy conversion efficiencies by enhancing solar absorption, heat localization, water supply, and vapor transportation. Mushrooms, as a kind of living organism, are surprisingly found to be efficient solar steam-generation devices for the first time. Natural and carbonized mushrooms can achieve ≈62% and ≈78% conversion efficiencies under 1 sun illumination, respectively. It is found that this capability of high solar steam generation is attributed to the unique natural structure of mushroom, umbrella-shaped black pileus, porous context, and fibrous stipe with a small cross section. These features not only provide efficient light absorption, water supply, and vapor escape, but also suppress three components of heat losses at the same time. These findings not only reveal the hidden talent of mushrooms as low-cost materials for solar steam generation, but also provide inspiration for the future development of high-performance solar thermal conversion devices.
太阳能蒸汽产生技术作为一种很有前途的技术正在兴起，因为它有可能将太阳能用于各种应用，如海水淡化和消毒。最近的研究报告了各种人工结构，这些结构旨在通过提高太阳能吸收、热量定位、供水和蒸汽输送来提高能量转换效率。令人惊讶的是，蘑菇作为一种生物，首次被发现是高效的太阳能蒸汽产生装置。天然蘑菇和碳化蘑菇在 1 个太阳光照下的转换效率分别约为 62%和 78%。研究发现，这种高效太阳能蒸汽产生的能力归因于蘑菇独特的天然结构，伞状黑色菌盖、多孔菌肉和纤维状菌柄，其横截面积较小。这些特征不仅提供了高效的光吸收、供水和蒸汽逸出，而且同时抑制了三个热损失组件。这些发现不仅揭示了蘑菇作为低成本太阳能蒸汽产生材料的隐藏潜力，而且为未来高性能太阳能热转换装置的发展提供了灵感。
