Enabling Self-Adaptive Water-Energy-Balance of Photothermal Water Diode Evaporator: Dynamically Maximizing Energy Utilization Under the Ever-Changing Sunlight.

Abstract

Maintaining a match between input solar energy and required energy by water supply management is key to achieving efficient interfacial solar-driven evaporation (ISDE). In practice, the solar radiation flux is constantly changing throughout the day, so keeping a dynamic water-energy-balance of ISDE is a big challenge. Herein, a photothermal water diode (WD) evaporator concept is proposed by an integrated hydrophilic/hydrophobic Janus absorber to overcome the issue. Due to the unique unidirectional water transport properties induced by asymmetric wettability, a self-adaptive balance between photothermal energy input and water uptake is established, thus realizing the energy matching and utilization maximization. The experimental and simulation results exhibit that with the increase of sunlight intensity, the water supply speed is significantly accelerated due to the dynamic management and self-regulation on water replenishment. Therefore, an excellent evaporation rate of up to 2.14kgm-2 h-1 with a high efficiency of 93.7% under 1sun illumination is achieved. This water diode engineering with Janus wettability provides a novel strategy and extends the path for designing solar evaporation systems with diverse water supply properties, which shows great potential in different environmental conditions.