Abstract
Solar steam generation is considered as one of the most promising technologies for water desalination. The key to its widespread application is to achieve a simple, scalable, and cost‐effective method to fabricate a high‐performance solar–thermal material under low solar flux conforming to the real conditions. Herein, inspired by the unique structure of natural sugarcane, a novel strategy is demonstrated to construct a solar–thermal material composed of carbon nanotubes and sugarcane for solar steam generation. The carbon nanotube layer provides a blackbody‐like high solar absorption and the sugarcane simultaneously serves as the thermal insulator and water channel due to the honeycomb structure with closed/open pores and the excellent hydrophilicity. Based on these, this as‐prepared absorber could achieve an evaporation rate of 1.65 kg m−2 h−1 and a conversion efficiency up to 94.2% under 1 sun illumination, comparable or even higher than most of the reported solar steam generation devices. Significantly, the efficiencies are all above 88.9% even under the low solar flux (<1 sun), surpassing those of other reported solar steam generation devices under ambient conditions. Such a sugarcane‐inspired design could provide a low‐cost and scalable solution to the pressing global clean‐water‐shortage problem.
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