Structural and Compositional Modulation of Porous Carbon for High-Performance Photothermal Water Evaporation

In recent years, carbon materials have been widely used in the field of photothermal conversion due to their high chemical stability, wide range of absorbance and low cost. However, the realization mechanism of photothermal conversion of carbon materials is still not well revealed, which limits the design and preparation of efficient photothermal carbon materials. Herein, an Al-based porous coordination polymer was used to prepare porous carbon materials, and statistical analysis was carried out to investigate the relationship between the structure parameters of the samples and the photothermal conversion efficiency. We found that the photothermal conversion efficiency of the samples shows a highly positive correlation with the free radical concentration and a strong correlation with the degree of graphitization. The volume and surface area of micropores also have a significant influence on the photothermal conversion efficiency of the samples. An evaporator was assembled using the porous carbon material by electrospinning method, the evaporator possesses a high evaporation rate of 1.72 kg/(m2 h) and the evaporation efficiency of ca. 89%, suggesting the highly practical potential of this carbon material in water treatment.