Efficient solar water evaporation enabled by Ti3O5/Ti4O7-based melamine-urea–formaldehyde aerogel evaporators

In emerging solar water evaporation technology, inorganic semiconductors have been brought into focus for their outstanding photo-thermal conversion (PTC) capabilities. Among them, only limited studies focused on the application of Magnéli phase titanium oxides as PTC materials, while fatal salt accumulation problems remained to be solved. Herein, evaporators containing Ti3O5/Ti4O7 as the PTC material and melamine-urea–formaldehyde (MUF) aerogel as the matrix were fabricated. The highest evaporation rates achieved under 1.0 sun illumination were 2.45 and 2.24 kg m-2h−1 in pure water and real seawater, respectively. Benefiting from the extensive number of channels constructed from ice-templated and cured aerogel matrix, our MUF-based evaporators eliminated the fouling problem caused by salt accumulation during desalination. Our work provides an integrated design for the fabrication of Magnéli phase titanium oxides into evaporators to ensure stable and efficient solar water evaporation.