An easily scalable, durable, and highly efficient three-dimensional solar evaporator inspired by a rice paddy field

Interfacial solar evaporation is a sustainable solution to overcome the shortage of fresh water. Although several solar evaporation systems capable of significant performance have been developed over the past few years, limitations remain with regard to their scalability, ease of fabrication, cost, and evaporation efficiency. In this report, we demonstrate a three-dimensional (3D) solar evaporation system composed of vertically aligned and lattice-arrayed polypyrrole (PPy) decorated 1D jute cords, inspired by a rice paddy field. The evaporators show a high evaporation rate of 3.47 kg m−2 h−1 under 1 kw m−2 of simulated solar illumination. This result arises from the combined effects of the photothermal performance of PPy and the vigorous side-surface evaporation accelerated by the acquisition of additional heat from the surroundings. The evaporators exhibited high evaporation performance during a long-term simulated seawater evaporation experiment due to their good salt-rejecting capability. The daily evaporation performance in a solar still field test reached 33.24 kg m−2 day−1 due to the synergistic effects of high temperature and humidity conditions in the solar still. In conclusion, the newly fabricated 1D-to-3D transformed PPy-decorated jute-cord evaporation system is a low cost solar evaporation system that is also easy to scale and manufacture.