Sandwich-structured evaporator with multilayer confined heating interface for boosting solar vapor generation

Abstract

Achieving interfacial localized heating and generating abundant heating interface have been verified two critical factors to promote solar energy utilization and vapor generation rate, but still a great challenge. Herein, a sandwich-structured evaporator composes of multilayer Cu-CuO meshes and non-woven cotton via a physical layer-by-layer assembly method is reported, which is obviously different from the currently reported evaporators that only have one light-absorbing layer, thus it is conducive to expose abundant heating interface in a controllable manner, and resulting in the finely designed sandwich-structured evaporator can achieve a high evaporation rate approximately 2.145 kg m−2 h−1. With the advantages of high evaporation rate, cost-effectiveness, simplicity, and reliable drinkable water yields from high-concentration brine, simulated seawater, dye wastewater, and heavy metal wastewater, this novel sandwich-structured design provides a new avenue to build up high-performance solar vapor generation systems.