• Asghar, M. Sohail
• Wageh, S.
• Arshad, Naila
• Guo, Jinming
• Wang, Xianbao
• Tao, Junyang
• Hao, Yabin
• Alhartomy, Omar A.
• Alomar, Muneerah
• Irshad, Muhammad Sultan
• Kalam, Abul

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Solar evaporation is a facile and promising technology to efficiently utilize renewable energy for freshwater production and seawater desalination. Here, the fabrication of self‐regenerating hydrogel composed of 2D‐MXenes nanosheets embedded in perovskite La <jats:sub>0.6</jats:sub>Sr <jats:sub>0.4</jats:sub>Co <jats:sub>0.2</jats:sub>Fe <jats:sub>0.8</jats:sub>O<jats:sub>3−</jats:sub><jats:italic><jats:sub>δ</jats:sub></jats:italic> (LSCF)/polyvinyl alcohol hydrogels for efficient solar‐driven evaporation and seawater desalination is reported. The mixed dimensional LSCF/Ti<jats:sub>3</jats:sub>C<jats:sub>2</jats:sub> composite features a localized surface plasmonic resonance effect in the polymeric network of polyvinyl alcohol endows excellent evaporation rates (1.98 kg m<jats:sup>−2</jats:sup> h<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>) under 1 k Wm<jats:sup>−2</jats:sup> or one sun solar irradiation ascribed by hydrophilicity and broadband solar absorption (96%). Furthermore, the long‐term performance reveals smooth mass change (13.33 kg m<jats:sup>−2</jats:sup>) during 8 h under one sun. The composite hydrogel prompts the dilution of concentrated brines and redissolves it back to water (1.2 g NaCl/270 min) without impeding the evaporation rate without any salt‐accumulation. The present research offers a substantial opportunity for solar‐driven evaporation without any salt accumulation in real‐life applications.</jats:p>

Topics

• perovskite
• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• composite
• alcohol
• evaporation