Fully Superhydrophilic, Self-Floatable, and Multi-Contamination-Resistant Solar Steam Generator Inspired by Seaweed

Highly hydrophilic materials enable rapid water delivery and salt redissolution in solar-driven seawater desalination. However, the lack of independent floatability inhibits heat localization at the air/water interface. In nature, seaweeds with internal gas microvesicles can float near the sea surface to ensure photosynthesis. Here, we have developed a seaweed-inspired, independently floatable, but superhy-drophilic (SIFS) solar evaporator. It needs no extra floatation support and can simultaneously achieve continuous water pumping and heat concentration. The evaporator resists salt accumulation, oil pollu-tion, microbial corrosion, and protein adsorption. Densely packed hollow glass microbeads promote intrinsic floatability and heat insulation. Superhydrophilic zwitterionic sulfobetaine hydrogel provides a continuous water supply, redissolves the deposited salt, and endows the SIFS evaporator with excellent anti-fouling properties. With its unprecedented anti-contamination ability, this SIFS evaporator is expected to open a new avenue for designing floatable superhydrophilic materials and solving real -world issues of solar steam generation in complex environmental conditions. (c) 2022 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier LTD on behalf of Chinese Academy of Engineering and Higher Education Press Limited Company. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

We have developed a seaweed-inspired, independently floatable superhydrophilic solar evaporator that can achieve continuous water pumping and heat concentration, and has anti-contamination and anti-fouling properties.