Solar-driven vapor generation offers an affordable and sustainable approach to solve global freshwater scarcity. Creating interfacial solar evaporators capable of increasing water production rates matching human water requirements is highly desirable but challenging due to the slow water transportation dynamics and unavoidable oil-fouling. Herein, a bio-inspired lotus-petiole-mimetic microstructured graphene/poly(N-acryloyl glycinamide) solar evaporator with integrated hydrophilic and hydrophobic microregions is developed. Through accurate control of the supramolecular interactions, the optimized solar evaporator incorporating unique structural features and wettability shows high light harvesting, enhanced water activation, and reduced energy demand for water vaporization, enabling a groundbreaking comprehensive performance along evaporation rate up to 3.4 kg m −2 h −1 and energy conversion efficiency of ≈93% under one sun irradiation (1 kW m −2 ). Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the abundant hydrogen bonding sites of the polymeric networks can thermodynamically modulate the escape behavior of water molecules. Notably, neither decrease in evaporation rate nor fouling on solar evaporators is observed during the prolonged purification process toward nano/submicrometer emulsions, oily brines, actual seawater, and domestic wastewater. This study provides distinctive insights into water evaporation behaviors at a molecular level and pioneers a rational strategy to design high-yield freshwater-generation systems for wastewater containing complex contaminants.
A long‐standing quest in marine materials science has been the development of tough and effective antifouling coatings for diverse surface protection. However, most commercial coatings are severely limited by poor mechanical behavior and unsustainable passive biocidal effect, leading to irreversible marine biofouling and even microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC). Herein, inspired by the amorphous/crystalline feature within nacreous platelets, a mechanically robust antifouling coating composed of biopolymer‐based hydrogel and dense metal‐organic frameworks (MOFs) is developed. Tailoring the cross‐linked networks across multiscale interfaces can furnish strength, dissipate strain, and improve toughness of the building blocks, resulting in a firm and scalable configuration on various substrates regardless of material category and surface topology. The resultant coating as a suitable reservoir exhibits a unique active defensive behavior of intelligent MOF degradation or drug release, enabling a groundbreaking performance for broad‐spectrum biofouling and corrosion control. Notably, neither attachment of marine organisms nor MIC of metal substrates is observed and aggravated during the prolonged testing process in complex biological environments. This study provides distinctive insights into the underlying multimechanisms of comprehensive anti‐fouling‐corrosion and pioneer a rational strategy to design next‐generation reliable MOFs‐derived coatings in marine environments.
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