Guo Youhong, de Vasconcelos Luize Scalco, Manohar Neha, Geng Jiafeng, Johnston Keith P, Yu Guihua
Materials Science and Engineering Program and Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.
Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2022 Jan 17;61(3):e202114074. doi: 10.1002/anie.202114074. Epub 2021 Dec 6.
Interfacial evaporation using porous hydrogels has demonstrated highly effective solar evaporation performance under natural sunlight to ensure an affordable clean water supply. However, it remains challenging to realize scalable and ready-to-use hydrogel materials with durable mechanical properties. Here, self-assembled templating (SAT) is developed as a simple yet effective method to fabricate large-scale elastic hydrogel evaporators with excellent desalination performance. The highly interconnected porous structure of the hydrogels with low tortuosity and tunable pore size enables high level of tunability on the water transport rate. With superior elasticity, the porous hydrogels are easy to process with a rapid shape recovery after being rolled, folded, and twisted over hundred times, and exhibit highly effective and stable evaporation with an evaporation rate of ≈2.8 kg m h and ≈90 % solar-to-vapor efficiency. It is anticipated that this SAT strategy, without the typical need for freeze-drying, will accelerate the industrialization of hydrogel solar evaporators for practical applications.
利用多孔水凝胶的界面蒸发在自然阳光下展现出了高效的太阳能蒸发性能，以确保提供价格合理的清洁水源。然而，要实现具有持久机械性能的可扩展且即用型水凝胶材料仍然具有挑战性。在此，自组装模板法（SAT）被开发为一种简单而有效的方法，用于制造具有优异脱盐性能的大规模弹性水凝胶蒸发器。水凝胶高度互连的多孔结构具有低曲折度和可调孔径，能够在水传输速率上实现高度可调性。多孔水凝胶具有卓越的弹性，在经过数百次滚动、折叠和扭曲后易于加工且能快速恢复形状，并展现出高效稳定的蒸发性能，蒸发速率约为2.8 kg·m⁻²·h，太阳能到蒸汽的效率约为90%。预计这种无需典型冷冻干燥的SAT策略将加速水凝胶太阳能蒸发器在实际应用中的工业化进程。
