Hierarchical Photothermal Fabrics with Low Evaporation Enthalpy as Heliotropic Evaporators for Efficient, Continuous, Salt-Free Desalination

Solar-driven seawater evaporation is usually achieved on floating evaporators, but the performances are substantially limited by high evaporation enthalpy, solid salt crystallization, and reduced evaporation due to inclined sunlight. To solve these problems, we fabricated hierarchical polyacrylonitrile@copper sulfide (PAN@CuS) fabrics and proposed a prototype of heliotropic evaporator. Hierarchical PAN@CuS fabrics show significantly decreased water-evaporation enthalpy (1956.32 kJ kg–1, 40 °C), compared with that of pure water (2406.17 kJ kg–1, 40 °C), because of the disorganization of the hydrogen bonds at the CuS interfaces. Based on this fabric, a heliotropic evaporation model was developed, where seawater slowly flows from high to low in the fabric. Under solar irradiation (1.0 kW m–2), this model exhibits a high-rate evaporation (∼2.27 kg m–2 h–1) and saturated brine production without solid salt crystallization. In particular, under inclined sunlight (angle range: from −90° to +90°), the heliotropic model retains an almost unchanged solar evaporation rate, whereas the floating model shows severe evaporation reduction (83.9%). Therefore, our study provides a strategy for reducing the evaporation enthalpy, maximally utilizing solar energy and continuous salt-free desalination.