Radiative cooling is a passive cooling strategy with zero consumption of electricity, and it can be used to radiate heat from buildings to reduce air conditioning requirements. Although this technology can work well during optimal atmospheric conditions at nighttime, it is essential to achieve efficient cooling during daytime when peak cooling demand actually occurs. In this article, we report an inexpensive planar polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)/metal thermal emitter, i.e., a thin film structure, which was fabricated using a fast solution coating process that is scalable for large area manufacturing. By performing tests under different environmental conditions, temperature reductions of 9.5 °C and 11.0 °C were demonstrated in the laboratory and outdoor environment, respectively, with an average cooling power of ~120 W/m 2 for the thin film thermal emitter. In addition, a spectral-selective structure was designed and implemented to suppress the solar input and control the divergence of the thermal emission beam. This enhanced the directionality of the thermal emissions, so the emitter's cooling performance was less dependent on the surrounding environment. Outdoor experiments were performed in Buffalo NY realizing continuous allday cooling of 2~9 °C on a typical clear sunny day at Northern United States latitudes. This practical strategy that cools without electricity input could have a significant impact on global energy consumption.

Passive solar vapor generation represents a promising and environmentally benign method of water purification/desalination. However, conventional solar steam generation techniques usually rely on costly and cumbersome optical concentration systems and have relatively low efficiency due to bulk heating of the entire liquid volume. Here, an efficient strategy using extremely low‐cost materials, i.e., carbon black (powder), hydrophilic porous paper, and expanded polystyrene foam is reported. Due to the excellent thermal insulation between the surface liquid and the bulk volume of the water and the suppressed radiative and convective losses from the absorber surface to the adjacent heated vapor, a record thermal efficiency of ≈88% is obtained under 1 sun without concentration, corresponding to the evaporation rate of 1.28 kg (m2 h)−1. When scaled up to a 100 cm2 array in a portable solar water still system and placed in an outdoor environment, the freshwater generation rate is 2.4 times of that of a leading commercial product. By simultaneously addressing both the need for high‐efficiency operation as well as production cost limitations, this system can provide an approach for individuals to purify water for personal needs, which is particularly suitable for undeveloped regions with limited/no access to electricity.

Abstract100% efficiency is the ultimate goal for all energy harvesting and conversion applications. However, no energy conversion process is reported to reach this ideal limit before. Here, an example with near perfect energy conversion efficiency in the process of solar vapor generation below room temperature is reported. Remarkably, when the operational temperature of the system is below that of the surroundings (i.e., under low density solar illumination), the total vapor generation rate is higher than the upper limit that can be produced by the input solar energy because of extra energy taken from the warmer environment. Experimental results are provided to validate this intriguing strategy under 1 sun illumination. The best measured rate is ≈2.20 kg m−2 h−1 under 1 sun illumination, well beyond its corresponding upper limit of 1.68 kg m−2 h−1 and is even faster than the one reported by other systems under 2 sun illumination.

A fundamental strategy is developed to enhance the light-matter interaction of ultra-thin films based on a strong interference effect in planar nanocavities, and overcome the limitation between the optical absorption and film thickness of energy harvesting/conversion materials. This principle is quite general and is applied to explore the spectrally tunable absorption enhancement of various ultra-thin absorptive materials including 2D atomic monolayers.