A scalable and anti-fouling silver-nickel/cellulose paper with synergy photothermal effect for efficient solar distillation

Solar interfacial evaporation is one of the most efficient and environmentally-friendly clean freshwater pro-duction technologies. Plasma metal nanoparticles are excellent optical absorption materials, but their high cost and inherent resonance narrow bandwidth absorption limit their application. In this work, commercial cellulose papers are used as substrates to synthesize Ag-Ni/cellulose paper by the seed-mediated method. The Ag-Ni/ cellulose paper exhibits high light absorption at the full wavelength (200-2500 nm) resulting from the syner-gistic effect of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of Ag NPs and the interband transitions (IBTs) of Ni. Under one-sun irradiation (1 kW m-2), the energy utilization efficiency of Ag-Ni/cellulose paper is as high as 93.8%, and the water evaporation rate is 1.87 kg m- 2 h-1. Diffusion inhibition experiment results show that the Ag-Ni/cellulose paper exhibits excellent antibacterial performance, and the antibacterial performance is highly related with Ag NPs content. These provide new opportunities for commercial production of competitive cost, green, and portable solar evaporators for different application sceneries.

Automated summary

In this study, Ag-Ni/cellulose paper was synthesized using commercial cellulose papers as substrates by the seed-mediated method. The paper exhibited high light absorption at the full wavelength range due to the synergistic effect of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of Ag NPs and the interband transitions (IBTs) of Ni. It showed a high energy utilization efficiency of 93.8% under one-sun irradiation and a water evaporation rate of 1.87 kg m-2 h-1. The paper also demonstrated excellent antibacterial performance, which was closely related to the content of Ag NPs. These findings provide new opportunities for the commercial production of cost-effective, green, and portable solar evaporators for various applications.