Hotspots and trends in solar-driven interfacial evaporation technology based on bibliometric management and analysis

Abstract

The solar-driven interface evaporation technology (SDIE) is an innovative and environmentally friendly desalination method, highly favored by researchers due to its low energy consumption, high efficiency, absence of secondary pollution, and alignment with sustainable development principles. By utilizing widely distributed solar energy as the driving force and employing simple and portable photothermal evaporation structures as the core component, SDIE achieves efficient energy conversion and demonstrates excellent seawater desalination capabilities. Consequently, it has gained significant attention from researchers in both seawater desalination systems and water treatment applications. This paper presents a knowledge framework on seawater SDIE through scientometric analysis of academic documents from 2014 to 2023. The technology is visually analyzed using collaborative networks, reference co-citation networks, and keyword co-discovery techniques. The results demonstrate an exponential increase in the number of documents published over time, highlighting the growing significance of SDIE techniques in interdisciplinary research. Furthermore, this manuscript clarifies the main focus areas in current research including desalination performance evaluation, development of high efficient photothermal materials, system design optimization as well as mechanism analysis. Additionally, existing challenges and future research directions are proposed to provide guidance for SDIE further research.