Building of multifunctional and hierarchical H_(x)MoO_(3)/PNIPAM hydrogel for high-efficiency solar vapor generation

摘要

Solar distillation is a sustainable and promising technique to generate fresh water.However,the solar vapor generation is a high energy consumption process,resulting in a low water yield under natural sunlight.Hence,developing of advanced evaporators that can simultaneously reduce the energy requirement of water vaporization and accelerate solar water evaporation remains a great challenge.In this study,we report the fabrication of a multifunctional hydrogel of H_(x)Mo O_(3)/PNIPAM with PNIPAM as hydratable skeleton and H_(x)Mo O_(3) as the light-absorbing unit for solar water evaporation.The experimental results demonstrate that the as-prepared hydrogel owns excellent photothermal activity.Accurately,the fabricated hydrogel-based solar evaporators achieved high water evaporation rate of 1.65 kg m^(-2)h^(-1)with the energy conversion efficiency of 85.87%under 1 k W m^(-2)irradiation.The enhanced photothermal activity of H_(x)Mo O_(3)/PNIPAM hydrogel can be attributed to the synergistic effects of the components composed in this hierarchical architecture that change the water state and further speed up water evaporation.The H_(x)Mo O_(3)/PNIPAM evaporators indicate its great potential for practical implementation of solar water evaporation.