Solar steam generation as a promising solar energy conversion technology has attracted considerable interest in achieving seawater desalination and water purification. Although wood with fast water transportation and excellent heat localization has drawn particular interest in regard to its application for solar steam generation, challenges still remain in terms of its complicated processing techniques and relatively low efficiency. Here, we propose a facile, cost-efficient, and scalable brushing method to prepare an aluminophosphate-treated wood (Wood@AlP) solar steam generation device. The aluminophosphate compound deposited on the wood surface can not only be considered as the Lewis acid catalyst capable of accelerating the formation of the carbon layer but also provide an aluminophosphate layer with a hierarchical porous structure, which is beneficial for broad solar absorption and vapor escape. On the other hand, benefiting from the natural hydrophilicity, low thermal conductivity, and excellent water transportation of wood, the obtained Wood@AlP device can float on seawater and exhibit a high solar thermal efficiency of 90.8% with a net evaporation rate of 1.423 kg m–2 h–1 under 1 sun illumination.

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Sustainable biomass materials are promising for low-cost wearable piezoresistive pressure sensors, but these devices are still produced with time-consuming manufacturing processes and normally display low sensitivity and poor mechanical stability at low-pressure regimes. Here, an aqueous MXene ink obtained by simply ball-milling is developed as a conductive modifier to fabricate the multiresponsive bidirectional bending actuator and compressible MXene-plant fiber sponge (MX-PFS) for durable and wearable pressure sensors. The MX-PFS is fabricated by physically foaming MXene ink and plant fibers. It possesses a lamellar porous structure composed of one-dimensional (1D) MXene-coated plant fibers and two-dimensional (2D) MXene nanosheets, which significantly improves the compression capacity and elasticity. Consequently, the encapsulated piezoresistive sensor (PRS) exhibits large compressible strain (60%), excellent mechanical durability (10 000 cycles), low detection limit (20 Pa), high sensitivity (435.06 kPa −1 ), and rapid response time (40 ms) for practical wearable applications.

The application of aluminophosphate adhesives in wood-based panel industries is limited by the adhesives' inherent disadvantage of poor water resistance caused by their mesoporous nature. In this study, poly(vinyl alcohol) was used as the modifier while glutaraldehye was employed as the crosslinker to reduce the water-uptake of the aluminophosphate bond interface in Pinus massoniana plywood. The influence of the cross-linking on the reaction mechanism, morphology, thermal stability of the adhesives, and tensile strength of the plywood was examined using FTIR, XRD, XPS, TGA, and SEM analyses. The SEM images showed the absence of pores on the adhesive surface at 1, 3, and 5% glutaraldehyde. Crystalline peaks were observed in aluminophosphate adhesives at a lower reaction temperature (110 °C). The C−O bonds were reduced, leading to the increase in C−C/C−H that could account for the bond stability in water after revealing hydrogen bonding between the plywood interfaces. Consequently, the wet tensile strength of PVA/aluminophosphate-based plywood was enhanced significantly (P < 0.05) above the type II Chinese standard, achieving a strength as high as 1.02 MPa. Also, the dry tensile strength improved slightly to 2.34 MPa compared to unmodified aluminophosphate adhesive. Therefore, modification with PVA and the addition of glutaraldehyde as a cross-linker could enhance the water stability of aluminophosphate-based plywood. This research has demonstrated the potential improvement of the plywood bondline and the industrial utilization of formaldehyde-free aluminophosphate adhesive for the wood-based panels.