Solar evaporation, which enables water purification without consuming fossil fuels, has been considered the most promising strategy to address global scarcity of drinkable water. However, the suboptimal structure and composition designs still result in a trade‐off between photothermal conversion, water transport, and tolerance to harsh environments. Here, an ultrastable amorphous Ta2O5/C nanocomposite is designed with a hollow multishelled structure (HoMS) for solar evaporation. This HoMS results in highly efficient photoabsorption and photothermal conversion, as well as a decrease of the actual water evaporation enthalpy. A superfast evaporation speed of 4.02 kg m−2 h−1 is achieved. More importantly, a World Health Organization standard drinkable water can be achieved from seawater, heavy‐metal‐ and bacteria‐containing water, and even from extremely acidic/alkaline or radioactive water sources. Notably, the concentration of pseudovirus SC2‐P can be decreased by 6 orders of magnitude after evaporation.

Water Purification In article number 2107400, Suojiang Zhang, Dan Wang, and co‐workers report an ultrastable amorphous Ta2O5/C nanocomposite with a hollow multishelled structure for solar evaporation, which results in highly efficient photoabsorption, photothermal conversion, and promoted water transport. Thus, a superfast evaporation speed of 4.02 kg m−2 h−1 is achieved. Importantly, the ion concentration meets the World Health Organization's drinking‐water standard after purification, even under extreme conditions.

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Including the transpiration of leaves, water evaporation from solar irradiation is a universal phenomenon in nature. Currently, solar vapor generation allows clean water to be obtained from various waterbodies. Since water is transported through porous structures and evaporates on their surfaces, the properties of the nanomicro structure, especially the surfaces are significantly important. For instance, the surface energy, determined by the localized atomic arrangement, can modify the interactions between water and the substrate. Moreover, the construction of a three-dimensional hierarchical structure can efficiently enlarge the surface area, and the provided channels play a vital role in mass transfer. In this review, we summarize recent research on the structural regulation in tuning the sequential steps in photo-vapor generation. We hope this review can provide a rational and systemic basis for the development of advanced solar vapor generating materials, especially from the view of surface engineering.

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is the most promising successor of current deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography. The very short wavelength, reflective optics, and nontelecentric structure of EUV lithography systems bring in different imaging phenomena into the lithographic image synthesis problem. This paper develops a gradient-based inverse algorithm for EUV lithography systems to effectively improve the image fidelity by comprehensively compensating the optical proximity effect, flare, photoresist, and mask shadowing effects. A block-based method is applied to iteratively optimize the main features and subresolution assist features (SRAFs) of mask patterns, while simultaneously preserving the mask manufacturability. The mask shadowing effect may be compensated by a retargeting method based on a calibrated shadowing model. Illustrative simulations at 22 and 16 nm technology nodes are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Applying solar energy to generate drinking water is a clean and low-energy exhaust route to address the issue of water purification. The current challenge with solar vapor generation is constructing nano/micro-hierarchical structures that can convert solar irradiation into exploitable thermal energy with high efficiency. Although various structures and material designs have been reported in recent years, solar vapor conversion can be improved by integrating light harvesting, thermal concentration, and water diffusion. Because of the optimized solar harvesting, enhanced heat capacity, and specified diffusive path endowed by the hierarchical composite structure, amorphous tantalum oxide/carbon-based yolk–shell structures (α-Ta2O5/C YS) for highly efficient solar vapor generation under 1 sun illumination are applied in this study. As a result, the α-Ta2O5/C YS realized a water evaporation rate of 3.54 kg m–2 h–1 with a solar-thermal conversion efficiency of 91% under one sun irradiation (1 kW m–2) with excellent evaporation stability. The collected water from seawater meets the World Health Organization drinking water standard. Importantly, reactive oxygen species enabled by α-Ta2O5 could be produced for water sterilization, exhibiting a facile way for application in various scenarios to acquire drinkable water.

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