A three-dimensional antifungal wooden cone evaporator for highly efficient solar steam generation

Abstract Interfacial solar energy evaporation is an effective measure to alleviate the current global shortage of clean water resources. However, many solar evaporators are two-dimensional (2D) structured devices developed by coating light-absorbing materials on the surface of host materials, and the efficiency of solar steam generation is limited. For this reason, the present study reports a facile and environment-friendly method to construct a conical three-dimensional (3D) wooden evaporator, which uses flexible wood as the substrate and tannic acid complex as the light-absorbing material and is formed by further convolution. Reasonable structural design and material combination enable the evaporator to show excellent mildew resistance and highly efficient evaporation performance. The black decoration considerably improves the wood light absorption, resulting in high absorbance (>90%) of DW-TA-Fe 3+ in the wavelength range of 200–800 nm. The water evaporation rate of the wooden cone evaporator can reach up to 1.79 kg m −2 h −1 , about 1.6 times higher than that of the 2D evaporator. Moreover, the evaporator exhibits outstanding biological stability and effective desalination performance. This work is expected to offer a new direction in designing a 3D wooden evaporator for effective solar water desalination.