A water lily–inspired hierarchical design for stable and efficient solar evaporation of high-salinity brine

In recent years, interfacial solar vapor generation has shown great potential in realizing desalination and wastewater treatment with high energy conversion efficiency. However, high evaporation rate cannot be maintained because of the seemingly unavoidable fouling or salt accumulation on the solar absorbers. The degradation accelerates as the solute concentration increases. Here, we demonstrate a water lily-inspired hierarchical structure that enables efficient evaporation (~80% solar-to-vapor efficiency) out of high-salinity brine [10 weight % (wt %)] and wastewater containing heavy metal ions (30 wt %). More notably, neither decrease in evaporation rate nor fouling on absorbers was observed during the…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Award: 21805132