Huiyue Wang, Xueying Wen, Kuankuan Liu, Qiuxuan Liu, Guixin Hu, Huajian Liu, Jie Liu, Yan She, Ran Niu, Tao Tang, Jiang Gong*

Interfacial solar-driven steam and electricity co-generation using Hydrangea-like graphene by salt-assisted carbonization of waste polylactic acid

SusMat (2024) Accept (IF2024 = 18.7)

The interfacial solar steam generation and water evaporation-driven power generation are regarded as promising strategies to address energy crisis. However, it remains challenging to construct low-cost evaporators for freshwater and electricity co-generation. Herein, we report a salt-assisted carbonization strategy of waste polylactic acid (PLA) to prepare Hydrangea flower-like graphene and build a bi-functional graphene-based evaporator. The evaporator presents merits of good sunlight absorption, photo-to-thermal conversion property, water transport, good thermal management capability, and negatively charged pores for the continuous diffusion of ions. Hence, it achieves the evaporation rate of 3.0 kg m^-2 h^-1 and output voltage of 0.425 V, surpassing many advanced evaporators/generators. Molecular dynamics simulation result proves that more Na⁺ are attracted by functional groups, especially -COOH/C-OH, to promote Na+ selectivity in nanochannels. This work offers new opportunities to construct multi-functional evaporators for freshwater and electricity co-generation.