The exploitation of salt-resistant
photothermal materials is of
great importance for practical solar desalination. Herein, we report,
for the first time, the synthesis of monolithic porous ionic polymers
(PIPs) coated with polypyrrole (PPy) as self-desalting photothermal
materials for efficient solar steam generation. Based on their good
thermal insulation, the desired mesopores, and the extremely high
light absorption (98%), the PPy-coated PIPs exhibit a high evaporation
efficiency of 89% under 1 sun irradiation and superior durability
in terms of evaporation efficiency in high-salinity (30 wt %) brine.
Quite different from the existing salt-resistant photothermal materials
by the artificial creation of aligned channels or Janus wettability,
interestingly, the self-desalting of our materials depends on their
intrinsically porous ionic framework, which could serve as “ions
barrier” to shield the cations of saline solution. These findings
may provide an opportunity for future design and fabrication of self-desalting
photothermal materials by only one-pot synthesis without a further
complicated process.
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