Yu Mingqing, Hu Jiaqi, Li Xinghao, Xu Linchu, Hu Huawei, Woodward Robert T, Lyu Wei, Liao Yaozu
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Fiber Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, China.
Institute of Materials Chemistry and Research, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Vienna, Währinger Straße 42, Vienna, 1090, Austria.
Adv Sci (Weinh). 2025 Aug;12(30):e04100. doi: 10.1002/advs.202504100. Epub 2025 May 29.
Global population growth and climate change are causing freshwater scarcity, which necessitates creative solutions like solar-driven desalination. This technology's widespread adoption is hampered by cost and efficiency issues. Intrinsic photothermal conversion efficiency has gotten less attention than light trapping and thermal management, which have been the main focuses of efforts to increase photo-to-vapor efficiencies. Here, a commercial padding and vapor polymerization method are used to develop scalable nylon fabrics that act as solar absorbers. This is achieved by anchoring iron catalysts with hydrolyzed perfluorooctyltriethoxysilane chains, which cause confined polymerization of pyrrole to generate polypyrrole. By narrowing the bandgap and generating bioinspired light-trapping nanostructures, this technique achieves a superior intrinsic photothermal conversion efficiency of 84.6%, which is 4.94 times higher than that of unconfined polymerization. These fabrics are used to create a Janus evaporator, which operates steadily in prolonged seawater testing and shows an evaporation rate of 3.84 kg m h. The low manufacturing cost of ≈28 RMB m emphasizes its scalability and economic potential. This work offers insights into the design of high-performance, scalable, and cost-effective solar absorbers by prioritizing increases in light absorption and intrinsic photothermal conversion efficiencies for developing solar desalination technology.
全球人口增长和气候变化正导致淡水短缺，这使得太阳能驱动海水淡化等创造性解决方案成为必要。这项技术的广泛应用受到成本和效率问题的阻碍。与光捕获和热管理相比，本征光热转换效率受到的关注较少，而光捕获和热管理一直是提高光-蒸汽效率努力的主要重点。在此，采用商业填充和气相聚合方法来开发可作为太阳能吸收器的可扩展尼龙织物。这是通过用水解的全氟辛基三乙氧基硅烷链锚定铁催化剂来实现的，该链导致吡咯的受限聚合以生成聚吡咯。通过缩小带隙并生成受生物启发的光捕获纳米结构，该技术实现了84.6%的卓越本征光热转换效率，比非受限聚合高4.94倍。这些织物用于制造一种双面蒸发器，该蒸发器在长时间的海水测试中稳定运行，蒸发速率为3.84 kg m² h⁻¹。约28元/m²的低制造成本突出了其可扩展性和经济潜力。这项工作通过优先提高光吸收和本征光热转换效率以开发太阳能海水淡化技术，为高性能、可扩展且经济高效的太阳能吸收器设计提供了见解。
