A reconfigurable and magnetically responsive assembly for dynamic solar steam generation

Yajie Hu, Hongyun Ma, Mingmao Wu, Tengyu Lin, Houze Yao, Feng Liu (), Huhu Cheng () and Liangti Qu ()
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Yajie Hu: Tsinghua University
Hongyun Ma: Tsinghua University
Mingmao Wu: Tsinghua University
Tengyu Lin: Tsinghua University
Houze Yao: Tsinghua University
Feng Liu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Huhu Cheng: Tsinghua University
Liangti Qu: Tsinghua University

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Interfacial solar vapor generation is a promising technique to efficiently get fresh water from seawater or effluent. However, for the traditional static evaporation models, further performance improvement has encountered bottlenecks due to the lack of dynamic management and self-regulation on the evolving water movement and phase change in the evaporation process. Here, a reconfigurable and magnetically responsive evaporator with conic arrays is developed through the controllable and reversible assembly of graphene wrapped Fe3O4 nanoparticles. Different from the traditional structure-rigid evaporation architecture, the deformable and dynamic assemblies could reconfigure themselves both at macroscopic and microscopic scales in response to the variable magnetic field. Thus, the internal water transportation and external vapor diffusion are greatly promoted simultaneously, leading to a 23% higher evaporation rate than that of static counterparts. Further, well-designed hierarchical assembly and dynamic evaporation system can boost the evaporation rate to a record high level of 5.9 kg m−2 h−1. This proof-of-concept work demonstrates a new direction for development of high performance water evaporation system with the ability of dynamic reconfiguration and reassembly.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32051-3

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