Cellulose-based Interfacial Solar Evaporators: Structural Regulation and Performance Manipulation

摘要

The shortage of freshwater resources has become a major obstaclethreatening human development, and directly utilizing solar energy by solarevaporators is emerging as a promising method to produce freshwater fromthe seawater. Compared to many synthetic polymer-based evaporators,cellulose-based evaporators are expected to offer more interesting featuresbenefiting from the renewable feature and abundant reserves ofcellulose-contained naturally occurring materials. First, according to thedifferent fabrication methods, cellulose-based solar evaporators can bedivided into two types, i.e., top-down utilization (wood-based) and bottom-upassembled (cellulose composite-based), respectively. The different fabricationschemes also bring their own unique advantages, such as the bimodal porousstructure of wood-based evaporators and the artificial interconnectionmicroporous network of cellulose composite-based evaporators.Subsequently, this review further summarizes the most recent advances andhighlights of those cellulose-based solar evaporators, by focusing on theirstructural regulation strategies (e.g., drilled channel array, asymmetricwettability structure, delignification, 2D waterway, etc.) and evaporationperformance improvements (e.g., salt resistance, high evaporation rate, etc.).Finally, the challenges in this field and potential solutions are also discussed,which are anticipated to provide new opportunities toward the futuredevelopment of cellulose and other kinds of biomass-based evaporators.