Facile Synthesis of Vertically Arranged CNTs for Efficient Solar-Driven Interfacial Water Evaporation

Lifen Su; Xiaoyu Liu; Xu Li; Bin Yang; Bin Wu; Ru Xia; Jiasheng Qian; Jianhua Zhou; Lei Miao

doi:10.1021/acsomega.2c06706

Facile Synthesis of Vertically Arranged CNTs for Efficient Solar-Driven Interfacial Water Evaporation

ACS Omega. 2022 Dec 12;7(50):47349-47356. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.2c06706. eCollection 2022 Dec 20.

Authors

Lifen Su^{1

2}, Xiaoyu Liu¹, Xu Li¹, Bin Yang¹, Bin Wu¹, Ru Xia¹, Jiasheng Qian¹, Jianhua Zhou³, Lei Miao³

Affiliations

¹ Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Environment-Friendly Polymer Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei230601, China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei230601, China.
³ Guangxi Key Laboratory of Information Materials, Engineering Research Center of Electronic Information Materials and Devices, Ministry of Education, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin541004, China.

Abstract

Solar-driven evaporation of water is a sustainable and promising technology for addressing the crisis of clean water. Herein, novel vertically arranged carbon nanotube (V-CNT) aerogels with a tree branch structure is facilely synthesized through an ice templating method. The V-CNT-based photothermal evaporator exhibits efficient broadband light trapping and super-hydrophilicity. Owing to the unique structure and ultrafast water transportation, a high evaporation rate of 3.26 kg m^-2 h^-1 was achieved by the three-dimensional V-CNT-based evaporator under a solar illumination of 1 kW m^-2. More significantly, the V-CNT shows excellent recycling stability and salt-resistant performance in seawater and may provide a novel strategy to the practical sustainable technique of water purification applications.