Highly Elastic Interconnected Porous Hydrogels through Self‐Assembled Templating for Solar Water Purification

Interfacial evaporation using porous hydrogels has demonstrated highly effective solar evaporation performance under natural sunlight to ensure an affordable clean water supply. However, it remains challenging to realize scalable and ready‐to‐use hydrogel materials with durable mechanical properties...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Angewandte Chemie 2022-01, Vol.134 (3), p.n/a
Main Authors: Guo, Youhong, Vasconcelos, Luize Scalco, Manohar, Neha, Geng, Jiafeng, Johnston, Keith P., Yu, Guihua
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chemistry
Desalination
Drying
elasticity
Evaporation
Evaporation rate
Evaporators
Hydrogels
interconnectivity
Mechanical properties
Pore size
porous hydrogels
solar water purification
template synthesis
Tortuosity
Transport rate
Water purification
Water supply
Water transport
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Summary:Interfacial evaporation using porous hydrogels has demonstrated highly effective solar evaporation performance under natural sunlight to ensure an affordable clean water supply. However, it remains challenging to realize scalable and ready‐to‐use hydrogel materials with durable mechanical properties. Here, self‐assembled templating (SAT) is developed as a simple yet effective method to fabricate large‐scale elastic hydrogel evaporators with excellent desalination performance. The highly interconnected porous structure of the hydrogels with low tortuosity and tunable pore size enables high level of tunability on the water transport rate. With superior elasticity, the porous hydrogels are easy to process with a rapid shape recovery after being rolled, folded, and twisted over hundred times, and exhibit highly effective and stable evaporation with an evaporation rate of ≈2.8 kg m−2 h−1 and ≈90 % solar‐to‐vapor efficiency. It is anticipated that this SAT strategy, without the typical need for freeze‐drying, will accelerate the industrialization of hydrogel solar evaporators for practical applications. A simple yet effective method, self‐assembled templating (SAT), is developed to synthesize 3D large‐scale, highly interconnected porous hydrogels (IPH). IPHs exhibit rapid water transport ability, quick shape recovery, and durable mechanical features, showing a promising method to scale up hydrogel solar evaporators for practical clean water production.
ISSN:0044-8249
1521-3757
DOI:10.1002/ange.202114074