Designing high-efficiency light-to-thermal conversion materials for solar desalination and photothermal catalysis

Efficient thermal energy conversion and storage enabled by hybrid graphite nanoparticles/silica-encapsulated phase-change microcapsules

“…Solar energy utilization generally includes photo-thermal conversion and photo-electric conversion. [1][2][3] Among the variety of solar energy photo-thermal utilization technologies, direct absorption solar collectors (DASCs), in which working uids directly absorb and transform solar energy into heat energy, represent one of the most important and widely used technologies. It has been proven to exhibit high utilization efficiency compared to traditional solar collectors (i.e., indirect absorption solar collectors).…”

A narrow-bandgap photothermal material based on a donor–acceptor structure for the solar–thermal conversion application

“…To date, many types of photothermal materials have been found to convert solar energy into thermal energy, mainly including metal-based inorganic materials, carbon-based materials and organic materials. [11][12][13] Organic materials have received signicant attention from researchers due to a high molar extinction coefficient, a designable structure and easy modication. Currently the common organic photothermal materials mainly involve organic polycyclic p-conjugated molecules, 14,15 organic cocrystal materials, 16,17 charge-transfer complexes, [18][19][20] and organic D-A type materials.…”

Light‐absorbing copolymers of polyimides as efficient photothermal materials for solar water evaporation

“…[3,4] Photothermal materials can absorb solar light and convert solar energy to thermal energy. [5][6][7][8][9][10] Being capable of directly and efficiently utilizing solar energy, photothermal materials have demonstrated promising prospects in water treatment, [11][12][13][14] photothermal diagnosis, [15][16][17][18] and photothermal power generation. [19][20][21][22] An ideal photothermal material should efficiently collect light across the solar spectrum and convert sunlight to heat without any other energy transformation (e.g., reradiation).…”