Emerging opportunities for nanotechnology to enhance water security

Alvarez, Pedro J. J.; Chan, Candace K.; Elimelech, Menachem; Halas, Naomi J.; Villagrán, Dino

doi:10.1038/s41565-018-0203-2

Cited by 701 publications

(366 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Freshwater supply is an intractable issue for a sustainable society, which is closely intertwined with energy crisis, [ 1 ] environment deterioration, [ 2 ] and health problems. [ 3 ] One approach to decoupling this nexus in a green way resorts to the utilization of solar energy. Recently, water purification based on interfacial solar evaporation emerges as a promising technology to extract freshwater from various water resources (seawater, sewage, brackish water, etc.).…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

A Scalable Nickel–Cellulose Hybrid Metamaterial with Broadband Light Absorption for Efficient Solar Distillation

Yang

Dong

et al. 2020

Advanced Materials

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absorbers have aroused great attention due to their resonant absorption and localized heating effect. [7][8][9] Nevertheless, this resonant absorption inherently features a narrow bandwidth, which is usually advantageous for applications such as biosensors [10] and resonant energy transfer, [11] but disadvantageous for broadband light absorption. [12,13] Some complex and delicate plasmonic metastructures were thus designed to hybridize proximate surface plasmons [12] or to support multiple resonances [13] in order to broaden the absorption bandwidth. However, the noble metals (i.e., Au and Ag) for plasmonic absorption along with the complicated fabrication procedures are undesirable for large-scale and full-spectrum (300-2500 nm) solar energy harvesting. [14] Zhou et al. creatively fabricated an all-aluminum hybrid plasmonic membrane, which was lowcost and enabled efficient broadband solar absorption. [15] The broadband plasmonic absorber was based on closely packed Al nanoparticles along the side walls of nanopores to induce a plasmon hybridization effect and high-density plasmonic resonances. [15] Among the several mechanisms that cause light absorption in metals, [16] interband transitions (IBTs) are single-electron excitations [17] from occupied levels in one band to unoccupied levels in another band, [18] in contrast to the collectively coherent excitation of electrons for plasmonic absorption. [19] IBTs intrinsically have a broadband attribute because photons the energy of which surpasses the interband threshold of a metal can excite IBTs. This makes IBTs very suitable for full-spectrum solar energy utilization, especially when massive IBTs over the entire solar spectrum can be supported by some transition metals (e.g., Ni, Pd, and Pt) with a high density of electronic states (DOS) near their Fermi levels. [20][21][22] In this work, we designed a Ni-cellulose hybrid metamaterial (NCM) that employs IBTs as the dominant optical absorption mechanism over the entire solar spectrum (Figures S1 and S2, and Note S1 for the detailed demonstration, Supporting Information). Nickel supports strong IBTs in very low energy regions (≈0.5 eV), which greatly increase optical absorption in the near-infrared spectrum compared to plasmonic metals (Au, Ag, and Cu). We densely embedded Ni nanoparticles into the nanogaps of cellulose microfibers via a seed-mediated and nanoconfined growth. This nanoconfinement effect can inhibit Sophisticated metastructures are usually required to broaden the inherently narrowband plasmonic absorption of light for applications such as solar desalination, photodetection, and thermoelectrics. Here, nonresonant nickel nanoparticles (diameters < 20 nm) are embedded into cellulose microfibers via a nanoconfinement effect, producing an intrinsically broadband metamaterial with 97.1% solar-weighted absorption. Interband transitions rather than plasmonic resonance dominate the optical absorption throughout the solar spectrum due to a high density of electronic states near the Fermi level of nickel. Fiel...

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Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

A Scalable Nickel–Cellulose Hybrid Metamaterial with Broadband Light Absorption for Efficient Solar Distillation

Yang

Dong

et al. 2020

Advanced Materials

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“…One of the most pervasive issues afflicting people worldwide is inadequate access to clean water . Technologies for the on‐site water purification from seawater or wastewater are called out for lower cost, less energy consumption, and minimum negative impact on the environment . Despite the maturity of thermal‐based approaches such as vapor compression and multiple‐effect distillation, they require too much electricity consumption along with large centralized installations, which is not a sustainable path for water treatment in off‐grid communities .…”

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confidence: 99%

Biomass‐Derived Hybrid Hydrogel Evaporators for Cost‐Effective Solar Water Purification

et al. 2020

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Solar vapor generation has presented great potential for wastewater treatment and seawater desalination with high energy conversion and utilization efficiency. However, technology gaps still exist for achieving a fast evaporation rate and high quality of water combined with low‐cost deployment to provide a sustainable solar‐driven water purification system. In this study, a naturally abundant biomass, konjac glucomannan, together with simple‐to‐fabricate iron‐based metal‐organic framework‐derived photothermal nanoparticles is introduced into the polyvinyl alcohol networks, building hybrid hydrogel evaporators in a cost‐effective fashion ($14.9 m−2 of total materials cost). With advantageous features of adequate water transport, effective water activation, and anti‐salt‐fouling function, the hybrid hydrogel evaporators achieve a high evaporation rate under one sun (1 kW m−2) at 3.2 kg m−2 h−1 out of wastewater with wide degrees of acidity and alkalinity (pH 2–14) and high‐salinity seawater (up to 330 g kg−1). More notably, heavy metal ions are removed effectively by forming hydrogen and chelating bonds with excess hydroxyl groups in the hydrogel. It is anticipated that this study offers new possibilities for a deployable, cost‐effective solar water purification system with assured water quality, especially for economically stressed communities.

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“…Here, the excited state S * 1 can involve ISC resulting in a rst excited tripled state S 3 * as shown in eqn (1). Supported by the literature, we can reasonable suppose that this process is also facilitated by the presence of graphene, which can prevent the S 3 * physical deactivation 48 and the electron-hole recombination between S 1 * and the porphyrin ground state.…”

Section: Ros Determinationmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…The light induced processes enacted by organic semiconductors represent a promising environmentally friendly solution in several elds such as medicine, energy and water treatment applications. [1][2][3] In particular, wastewater treatment driven by photocatalysis takes advantage of the use of light as a renewable energy source, allowing purication without adding further chemicals to the aqueous media. 4 Importantly, photocatalytic based technologies can lead to the removal of emerging contaminants such as drugs, pesticides and chemicals deriving from personal care products (PCPs), becoming a more and more appealing approach to improving the traditional purication systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hybrid nickel-free graphene/porphyrin rings for photodegradation of emerging pollutants in water

et al. 2019

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Emerging opportunities for nanotechnology to enhance water security

Cited by 701 publications

References 63 publications

A Scalable Nickel–Cellulose Hybrid Metamaterial with Broadband Light Absorption for Efficient Solar Distillation

A Scalable Nickel–Cellulose Hybrid Metamaterial with Broadband Light Absorption for Efficient Solar Distillation

Biomass‐Derived Hybrid Hydrogel Evaporators for Cost‐Effective Solar Water Purification

Hybrid nickel-free graphene/porphyrin rings for photodegradation of emerging pollutants in water

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