Solar‐driven interfacial desalination (SDID), which is based on localized heating and interfacial evaporation, provides an opportunity for developing environmentally friendly and cost‐effective seawater thermal desalination. However, localized heating and rapidly generated interfacial steam may cause salt to accumulate on the evaporator's surface and block the channel of steam evaporation. Salt accumulation inevitably reduces the light absorption and service period of the solar absorber, resulting in a significant decrease in evaporation efficiency over time. Salt accumulation makes it difficult to produce SDID devices with high energy efficiency and long‐term stability for large‐scale use in remote poverty‐stricken areas. Therefore, the exploration of novel and effective strategies for addressing salt accumulation through both material design and structural engineering has attracted more attention in recent years. This review presents an overview of the state‐of‐the‐art advancements in salt‐resistant photothermal evaporation and discusses the critical issues for achieving salt mitigation SDID, focusing on the classification of salt mitigation strategies based on photothermal evaporation configurations, the basic mechanism of salt mitigation, and the architectural design of photothermal materials. Finally, the important challenges and prospects of SDID are discussed to providing a meaningful roadmap to efficient salt mitigation SDID.
Superhydrophilic porous carbon foam was successfully synthesized by facile carbonization of potato, providing a new perspective to design self-desalting monolithic ISSG to satisfy the demand for highly efficient and enduring solar desalination.
Because of their outstanding structural, chemical, and functional diversity, metal‐organic frameworks (MOFs) have brought about worldwide interest over the last 2 decades, which have been utilized in a wide range of applications in the fields of gas separation, storage, catalysis, and drug delivery. However, among these applications, MOFs are almost used in the form of powder. Due to their fragility and difficulty in preparing large‐area thin film materials, the study of MOF films and their electronic properties is a challenging problem in the research of MOFs. Owing to the low‐energy charge transport mode, most MOF films are essentially insulating, which largely limits their applications in fields where electronic charge transport takes place, such as electronics or electrochemistry. So, the introduction of conductivity into the MOF films opens new avenues for their applications in electrochemical sensing, supercapacitors, batteries, electrocatalysis, and electronic devices and makes the research on and with MOF films very active. Herein, the latest progress of conductive MOF films, including the preparation of MOF films, the design and adjustment strategies for constructing intrinsic and doping conductive MOF films, and their applications are reviewed. In addition, the numerous challenges of conductive MOF films are also elaborated.
Solar-driven
interfacial steam generation (SDISG), as an emerging
green and renewable approach to overcome water shortage, is very suitable
for remote locations, developing countries, and disaster zones because
it does not require an additional energy supply. However, the traditional
metal-based and carbon-based absorbers always suffered from fragility
(or rigidity) and the complex preparation process, which dramatically
inhibited their transportation and installation in areas with poor
infrastructure. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a universal
method to fabricate flexible solar evaporators. Herein, a novel solar
evaporator that integrates a flexible matrix (Cu mesh or textile)
and a hierarchical Fe-MOF-74 photothermal absorber component is perfectly
prepared for the rapid and efficient SDISG. Notably, the results show
that Fe-MOF-74-based flexible textile matrix composites exhibit outstanding
light absorption (83.81%), low thermal conductivity (0.1730 W/m K),
super hydrophilic properties (within 50 ms, the contact angle is close
to 0°), excellent salt resistance, high evaporation rate (1.35
kg/m2 h), and photothermal conversion efficiency (η
is 81.5% under one sun, stable for 30 days). Owing to the flexibility,
recyclability, and above-mentioned excellent performance, the prepared
hierarchical Fe-MOF-74-based flexible composite systems are more practical
for transportation, large-scale production, and stable and efficient
applications. As a result, this work offers new insight into the future
development of the combination of a MOF-based photothermal absorber
and flexible substrates, as well as for the application of interfacial
solar seawater desalination, and provides a new reference for other
applications.
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