Plant-Mimetic Vertical-Channel Hydrogels for Synergistic Water Purification and Interfacial Water Evaporation

The integration of renewable solar energy-driven interfacial evaporation and photocatalysis has recently emerged as one of the most promising technologies for simultaneous freshwater production and pollutant removal. However, the construction of an advanced integrated system with the merit of a fast supply of water and pollutant molecules remains challenging for efficient solar-driven evaporation and photocatalytic performance. Herein, inspired by the transpiration of plants, we fabricate a biomimetic, vertically channeled polypyrrole/foam-like carbon nitride/poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogel (PCH) by directional freeze-drying. We prove that the vertically aligned channels not only reduce heat loss and improve energy conversion efficiency but also facilitate the transport of water and organic pollutants to the air-water interface. Benefiting from the advantages above, the PCH evaporator presents a high solar evaporation efficiency of 92.5%, with the evaporation rate achieving 2.27 kg m-2 h-1 under 1 kW m-2 irradiation, exceeding many advanced interfacial solar-driven evaporators. Meanwhile, PCH reaches a degradation efficiency of 90.6% within 1 h when dealing with tetracycline (a typical antibiotic)-polluted water, remarkably higher than that of the hydrogel without vertically aligned channels (68.6%). Furthermore, the as-formed reactive oxygen species effectively kill Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial in the source water, achieving the all-round water purification. In an outdoor experiment, after 11 h of sunlight irradiation, the tetracycline degradation efficiency and freshwater production of the PCH evaporator rise to 99.0% and 6.2 kg m-2, respectively. This work highlights the novel biomimetic approach to fabricate multifunctional photothermal materials for simultaneous freshwater production and polluted-water remediation.