Self‐Repairing and Damage‐Tolerant Hydrogels for Efficient Solar‐Powered Water Purification and Desalination

Abstract

Solar‐driven interfacial evaporation has emerged as an innovative and sustainable technology for efficient, clean water production. Real‐world applications depend on new classes of low‐cost, lightweight, and robust materials that can be integrated into one monolithic device, which withstands a variety of realistic conditions on open water. Self‐repairing building blocks are highly desired to prevent permanent failures, recover original functions and maintain the lifetime of interfacial steam generators, although related studies are scarce to date. For the first time, a monolithic, durable, and self‐floating interfacial steam generator with well‐defined structures is demonstrated by integrating self‐healing hydrogels through facile processes in surface modulation and device fabrication. High and stable water evaporation rates over 2.0 kg m−2 h−1 are attained under 1 sun on both fresh water and brine with a broad range of salinity (36–210 g kg−1). The solar evaporation and desalination performance are among the best‐performing interfacial steam generators and surpass a majority of devices that are constructed by composite polymers as structural components. This study provides a perspective and highlights the future opportunities in self‐healing and damage‐tolerant materials that can simultaneously improve the performance, durability, and lifetime of interfacial steam generators in real‐world applications.

Fully Biomass-Based Hybrid Hydrogel for Efficient Solar Desalination with Salt Self-Cleaning Property

“…Hydrogels, which are capable of possessing high water content ascribing to the hydrophilic functional groups in the polymer backbone and the three-dimensional polymeric networks, are emerging as a new materials platform for solar-driven steam generation. − Notably, hydrogels can accelerate water evaporation mainly by reducing water evaporation enthalpy. , Other advantages of hydrogels, e.g., managing heat distribution and tailoring evaporation surface make it an ideal material for solar-driven desalination. Compared with other synthetic polymers that may exert negative impacts on the environment due to their ultralong degradation time, biomass is highly biocompatible and biodegradable after the lifespan, which has attracted enormous attention for the development of solar-driven evaporators owing to their biocompatibility, sustainability, and low production cost. − …”

Design of Double‐Network Click‐Gels for Self‐Contained Underwater Adhesion and Energy‐Wise Applications in Floating Photovoltaics

“…Dynamic rheological testing was performed to study the gels’ deformation and flow behavior. [ 64 ] SN‐based PIL3 and click‐PEGDA gels were prepared as control groups and were characterized together with the click‐gel (PIL3:PEGDA = 3:5). The shear strain amplitude dependence of storage and loss moduli ( G ′ and G″ ) was measured to evaluate the viscoelastic properties.…”

Ultrablack Poly(vinyl alcohol)‐Graphite Composite Xerogel with Vertically Arranged Pores for Highly Efficient Solar Steam Generation and Desalination

“…Ultrablack materials refer to the materials that absorb almost all of the incident light of a certain band without reflection and transmittance. Due to their high light absorbance and efficient photothermal conversion, [1][2][3][4] ultrablack materials are used for shading, [5,6] photothermal therapy, [7,8] photocatalysis, [9] detection, [10][11][12] solar steam generation, [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and other fields. [21,22] Among these applications, solar steam generation, which is an economical technology that uses solar energy and the photothermal effect of ultrablack materials to promote evaporation of water and thereby solve the crises of drinking water shortage and water pollution, comes to the force in recent years.…”