太阳能海水脱盐中光热材料与蒸发装置的研究进展

用于海水脱盐的太阳能界面蒸发装置因其绿色环保、简单高效以及适用范围广等优点,受到了广泛关注。与传统的体积式蒸发装置不同,太阳能界面蒸发装置将太阳光的收集和蒸汽的产生锁定在空气-水的界面,无需从底部加热整体水来产生蒸汽,极大提高了能源利用效率。本文详细介绍了太阳能界面水蒸发装置的重要组成部分——光热材料的光热转换机理、材料种类以及材料的性能;探讨了高效海水净化太阳能蒸发装置的设计策略(增强光吸收、充足水供应、耐盐排盐等)。在此基础上,总结了基于界面蒸发中的太阳能蒸发装置的研究进展,展望了新型太阳能蒸发装置在海水净化领域的发展前景。     

Application of surface wettability modified polypropylene nonwoven in Janus composite fibrous mats for the function of directional water transport

Textiles with the function of directional water (sweat) transport play a pivotal role in regulating human thermal and wet comfort. Polypropylene nonwoven (PPNW) fabric has an excellent moisture (sweat) conduction due to its inert water absorption, which makes moisture be difficult to adhere on the PP fiber surface. Nevertheless, excessive hydrophobicity also affects the comfort of clothing materials, and thus it is significant to improve wettability of PP fiber used in the field of textile. In this study, it was reported a kind of composite fibrous mats with the function of directional water transport. The polymerization of acrylic acid (AAc) was grafted on the surface of plasma‐treated PPNW (TPPNW) as the inner layer (TPPNW‐AAc), which was able to improve the wettability of the PPNW surface. Polyacrylonitrile containing alumina nano‐particles (PAN‐Al₂O₃) layer was deposited on the surface of TPPNW‐AAc by electrospinning technology as the outer layer. The wettability difference between the inner and outer layers of the material was utilized to induce the push‐pull effect to transport water from the TPPNW‐AAc layer to the PAN‐Al₂O₃ layer. The surface wettability of the TPPNW‐AAc layer and the performance of the directional water transport of composite fibrous mats were characterized systematically. Experimental results demonstrated that the composite fibrous mats showed the excellent accumulative one‐way transport index (AOTI, 870%), remarkable overall moisture management capacity (OMMC, 0.8) when the contact angle of the TPPNW‐AAc surface can be reduced from 119° to 30°, and decent wearability performance.     

光热材料在太阳能海水脱盐中应用的研究进展

用于海水脱盐的太阳能界面蒸发装置因其绿色环保、简单高效以及适用范围广等优点,受到了广泛关注。与传统的体积式蒸发装置不同,太阳能界面蒸发装置将太阳光的收集和蒸汽的产生锁定在空气-水的界面,无需从底部加热整体水来产生蒸汽,极大提高了能源利用效率。本文详细介绍了太阳能界面水蒸发装置的重要组成部分——光热材料的光热转换机理、材料种类以及材料的性能;探讨了高效海水净化太阳能蒸发装置的设计策略(增强光吸收、充足水供应、耐盐排盐等)。在此基础上,总结了基于界面蒸发中的太阳能蒸发装置的研究进展,展望了新型太阳能蒸发装置在海水净化领域的发展前景。     

Comparison of surface segregation and anticoagulant property in block copolymer blended evaporation and phase inversion membranes

In our recent study, an ABA amphiphilic triblock copolymer poly(vinyl pyrrolidone)‐b‐poly(methyl methacrylate)‐b‐poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP‐b‐PMMA‐b‐PVP) was synthesized and directly blended with polyethersulfone (PES) to prepare membranes. To further investigate the effects of surface energy and miscibility on the near‐surface composition profile of the membranes, evaporation membrane and phase inversion membrane of PES/PVP‐b‐PMMA‐b‐PVP were prepared by evaporating the solvent in a vacuum oven, and by a liquid–liquid phase separation technique, respectively. The surface composition and morphology of the membranes were investigated using XPS and tapping mode atomic force microscopy, and the surface segregations of the membranes were compared and discussed. For the evaporation membrane, PVP blocks were buried below the lower surface energy PMMA blocks and PES substrate at the airside surface. For the phase inversion membrane, however, the hydrophilicity of PVP blocks were the biggest driving force because of the high speed exchange between water and solvent, and present at the membrane surface. Thus, the modified PES membrane prepared by using phase inversion method has a layer of PVP block brushes on its surface and has the better anticoagulant property, which might improve the blood compatibility of the membrane and has potential to be used in blood purification. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

MXene/枝状Co/聚偏氟乙烯复合光热膜制备及其界面蒸发性能

使用湿法刻蚀方式将Ti₃AlC₂刻蚀剥离成单/少层Ti₃C₂T_x MXene纳米片,采用电化学还原法制备枝状Co,然后以亲水的聚偏氟乙烯(PVDF)膜为基底通过真空抽滤制备Ti₃C₂T_x/枝状Co/PVDF复合光热膜。对复合材料的结构和形貌进行表征,研究了复合光热膜的光吸收性能和界面蒸发性能。结果表明,在模拟1个太阳光照下(光照强度为1 kW·m^-2),Ti₃C₂T_x/枝状Co/PVDF复合光热膜的光吸收率达到95.3%,纯水蒸发速率达到1.78 kg·m^-2·h^-1,界面蒸发效率高达97.5%。此外,还测试了在模拟海水中的界面蒸发性能,蒸发冷凝得到的水达到世界卫生组织(WHO)和美国环境保护署(EPA)饮用水标准,蒸发速率达到1.61 kg·m^-2·h     

Electrospinning Janus Nanofibrous Membrane for Unidirectional Liquid Penetration and Its Applications

Janus membrane with opposite wettability on its two sides has witnessed an explosion of interest in the field of liquid spontaneous and directional transport for their promising prospect. The advances in fabrication technology and natural bionics have brought remarkable progress for the development of Janus mate-rials. Among the exciting progress, the micro/nanofabrication technique of electrospinning shows advantages in constructing thin porous fibrous membrane materials with controllable surface wettabi-lity and hierarchical structures. Here, a brief review of bioinspired Janus membrane for unidirectional liquid penetration fabricated by electrospinning is presented, and the underlying scientific mechanism is discussed with an emphasis on the materials design involving asymmetric surface wettability and micro-topology structure. An overview of recent emerging applications is also reviewed, with special attentions to liquid separation, water collection, distillation, and smart textile, etc. As researchers keep to develop more efficient strategies on designing new Janus membrane with higher performances, it has become increasingly important to understand the mechanism of liquid moving dynamics at the asymmetric interface in order to better recognize the scientific limitations currently hindering the field development. At last, the challenges currently faced and possible strategies on developing new Janus membranes for optimization and engineering in the future are proposed.     

Mechanically durable biomimetic fibrous membrane with superhydrophobicity and superoleophilicity for aqueous oil separation

Developing an effective and mechanically durable biomimetic membrane for the separation of highly emulsified aqueous oil is significant but challenging owing to its low water flux and serious membrane fouling. In this work, a biomimetic membrane with superhydrophobicity and superoleophilicity was rationally developed via co-electrospinning of polysulfonamide/polyacrylonitrile (PSA/PAN) emulsion solution, followed by decorating of α-Fe₂O₃ nanowire onto the membrane surface to create membrane roughness, and grafting of 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorododecyltrichlorosilane (FTCS) to lower membrane surface free energy. Benefiting from the nanowire-wrapped rough membrane structure and the low surface free energy FTCS, the resultant membrane showed superhydrophobicity with a high water contact angle (WCA) of 156°, superoleophilicity with a low oil contact angle (OCA) of 0°, which can separate the highly emulsified aqueous oil with an ultrahigh permeation flux over 7000 L m⁻² h^-1 and high separation efficiency of about 99%. Significantly, the biomimetic membrane also displayed robust stability for long-term separation owing to its advantage of antifouling property, showing great potential applications in large-scale aqueous oil treatment.     

Phase‐Transition Induced Conversion into a Photothermal Material: Quasi‐Metallic WO2.9 Nanorods for Solar Water Evaporation and Anticancer Photothermal Therapy

Phase transition from WO₃ to sub‐stoichiometric WO_2.9 by a facile method has varied the typical semiconductor to be quasi‐metallic with a narrowed band gap and a shifted Femi energy to the conduction band, while maintaining a high crystallinity. The resultant WO_2.9 nanorods possess a high total absorption capacity (ca. 90.6 %) over the whole solar spectrum as well as significant photothermal conversion capability, affording a conversion efficiency as high as around 86.9 % and a water evaporation efficiency of about 81 % upon solar light irradiation. Meanwhile, the promising potential of the nanorods for anticancer photothermal therapy have been also demonstrated, with a high photothermal conversion efficiency (ca. 44.9 %) upon single wavelength near‐infrared irradiation and a high tumor inhibition rate (ca. 98.5 %). This study may have opened up a feasible route to produce high‐performance photothermal materials from well‐developed oxides.     

Multi-Channel Optical Device for Solar-Driven Bacterial Inactivation under Real-Time Temperature Feedback

Solar-driven photothermal antibacterial devices have attracted a lot of interest due to the fact that solar energy is one of the cleanest sources of energy in the world. However, conventional materials have a narrow absorbance band, resulting in deficient solar harvesting. In addition, lack of knowledge on temperature change in these devices during the photothermal process has also led to a waste of energy. Here, we presented an elegant multi-channel optical device with a multilayer structure to simultaneously address the above-mentioned issues in solar-driven antibacterial devices. In the photothermal channel, semiconductor IrO₂-nanoaggregates exhibited higher solar absorbance and photothermal conversion efficiency compared with nanoparticles. In the luminescence channel, thermal-sensitive Er-doped upconversion nanoparticles were utilized to reflect the microscale temperature in real-time. The bacteria were successfully inactivated during the photothermal effect under solar irradiation with temperature monitoring. This study could provide valuable insight for the development of smart photothermal devices for solar-driven photothermal bacterial inactivation in the future.     

Janus particles with a functional gold surface for control of surface plasmon resonance

We report in this study the presence of Janus particles, which are candidates for use with electronic color papers. We used negatively charged polystyrene particles (370 nm) as the core particles, and gold was then sputtered onto their packed monolayer under several conditions. The sputtered particles were next redispersed into the aqueous medium by gentle sonication. Gold nanoparticles localized on one side of the cores could also serve as seeds for subsequent shell growth by electroless gold plating. Through these treatments, a series of well-dispersed Janus particles were obtained with gold nanostructures of different size and shape only on one side. Their dispersions showed different colors originating from the surface plasmon resonance absorption of gold nanoparticles localized on the hemisphere. The particles obtained by this approach have potential applications such as in sensors and electronic color paper.     

Rationally pairing photoactive materials for high-performance polymer solar cells with efficiency of 16.53%

The emergence of non-fullerene acceptors(NFA) offers a promising opportunity to develop high-performance donor/acceptor pairs with high power conversion efficiency,as NFAs offer tunable energy levels,broad absorption and suitable aggregation property.In order to enhance light-harvesting capability of active layers,we choose a wide bandgap polymer PTQ10 as the donor to blend with a narrow bandgap NFAY6 as the acceptor.In comparison with PTQ10:IDIC blend,~130 nm red-shifted absorption spectrum is observed in the PTQ10:Y6 blend,which potentially enhance the short-circuit current density(Jsc) for the PSCs.In addition,the optimal PTQ10:Y6 blend shows higher photoluminescence quenching efficiency and more efficient charge separation,higher charge mobilities,as well as weaker bimolecular recombination over the PTQ10:IDIC blend,which leads to an outstanding power conversion efficiency(PCE) of 16.53%,with a notable Jsc of 26.65 mA cm^-2 and fill factor(FF) of 0.751.     

Developing Flexible Quinacridone-Derivatives-Based Photothermal Evaporaters for Solar Steam and Thermoelectric Power Generation

Solar-driven interfacial vaporization by localizing solar-thermal energy conversion to the air−water interface has attracted tremendous attention. In the process of converting solar energy into heat energy, photothermal materials play an essential role. Herein, a flexible solar-thermal material di-cyan substituted 5,12-dibutylquinacridone (DCN−4CQA)@Paper was developed by coating photothermal quinacridone derivatives on the cellulose paper. The DCN−4CQA@Paper combines desired chemical and physical properties, broadband light-absorbing, and shape-conforming abilities that render efficient photothermic vaporization. Notably, synergetic coupling of solar-steam and solar-electricity technologies by integrating DCN−4CQA@Paper and the thermoelectric devices is realized without trade-offs, highlighting the practical consideration toward more impactful solar heat exploitation. Such solar distillation and low-grade heat-to-electricity generation functions can provide potential opportunities for fresh water and electricity supply in off-grid or remote areas.     

Light-conversion phosphor nanoarchitectonics for improved light harvesting in sensitized solar cells

Photovoltaic technology provides a promising approach for solar energy conversion. One significant factor limiting the efficiency is the poor light harvesting of solar energy, which is related to the mismatch between the energy distribution of photons and the absorption of semiconductor materials or dye. Light-conversion phosphors have been explored as spectral converters to improve the light-harvesting ability in sensitized solar cells. Many progressive studies have been conducted to expand the family of light-conversion phosphors and exploit their application in sensitized solar cells, bringing emerging opportunities to develop commercial sensitized solar cells. In this review, we survey the development of light-conversion phosphors in sensitized solar cells. First, the application and conversion mechanism of light-conversion phosphors, including up-conversion phosphors, down-conversion phosphors, up/down conversion phosphors, and long-lasting phosphors, are summarized in detail. After that, the challenging problems and possible solutions of applying light-conversion phosphors to sensitized solar cells are discussed. The review also highlights some new ideas in the development of sensitized solar cells and the application of light-conversion phosphors in other solar technology.     

The evolution of organic materials for efficient dye-sensitized solar cells

In the past three decades, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have gained increased recognition as a potential substitute for inexpensive photovoltaic (PV) devices, and their maximum efficiency has grown from 7% to 14.3%. Recent developments in DSSCs have attracted a plethora of research activities geared at realizing their full potential. DSSCs have seen a revival as the finest technology for specific applications with unique features such as low-cost, non-toxic, colourful, transparent, ease of fabrication, flexibility, and efficient indoor light operation. Several organic materials are being explored and employed in DSSCs to enhance their performance, robustness, and lower production costs to be viable alternatives in the solar cell markets. This review provides a concise summary of the developments in the field over the past decade, with a special focus on the incorporation of organic materials into DSSCs. It covers all elements of the DSSC technology, including practical approaches and novel materials. Finally, the emerging applications of DSSCs, and their future promise are also discussed.     

超浸润光热材料的构筑及其多功能应用研究

随着工业社会的不断发展,不同行业对于超浸润材料的功能提出了更高的要求,超浸润材料向多功能化或智能化转型成为其发展的必然趋势。同时,在人们对环境问题日益重视的背景下,符合环保可持续、高效、低耗的新技术受到关注,具有光热效应的超浸润材料作为实现油水分离、海水淡化及太阳能蒸发等领域的新兴产品而成为研究热点。本文首先介绍了近年来碳基、有机物基、半导体基及复合型超浸润光热材料构筑的研究现状并对其局限性进行了分析,然后梳理并详细论述超浸润光热材料在防覆冰、海水淡化、油水分离等领域的应用进展及其作用机理,进而总结了其目前制备过程中存在的环境危害性等问题,并对功能性与智能型超浸润光热材料的发展趋势及研究路线进行了展望。     

Naphthodithiophene-based donor materials for solution processed organic solar cells

As an emerging donor building block, naphthodithiophene (NDT) is causing more concerns in the field of organic semiconductors. With the rigid and coplanar molecule structure, NDT will exhibit more application space relying on its own advantage for facilitating the charge carrier transport. In this review article, we have summarized the development progress on the NDT-based donor materials for solution processed organic solar cells. Discussions and comments on those representative NDT type materials about structure and property are also presented.     

基于Ti3C2-MXene的太阳能界面水汽转换

水资源匮乏是现代化发展中面临的全球性问题,太阳能界面水汽转换(Interfacial Solar Steam Generation,ISSG)是一种高效、绿色、低成本进行海水淡化和废水处理的方法.ISSG使用绿色的太阳能作为热源,通过光热转换并将热限制在水气界面上以高效产生蒸气,然后经过冷凝收集获得清洁水.设计和构筑具...     

Cellulose fibrous sorbents with conformationally flexible aminocarboxylic groups for preconcentration of metals

New cellulose fibrous sorbents, containing a diethylenetriamine tetraacetate groups, are proposed for the preconcentration of heavy metals. Quantitative extraction of heavy metals from river and sea water is achieved in a wide pH range (3–8) at a high solution flow rate (up to 100–150 volumes of sorbent per minute). Quantitative desorption of metals is achieved with a very small volume of the acid.     

Polypyrrole-cobalt-carbon nanocomposites as efficient counter electrode materials for dye-sensitized solar cells

In this work, we demonstrate a new kind of Pt-free counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells(DSCs). Polypyrrole-cobalt-carbon(PPY-Co-C) nanocomposites, with the advantages of low cost and simple preparation, show favorable catalytic activity in promoting tri-iodide reduction. The DSC composed of the PPY-Co-C nanocomposite electrode exhibits an acceptable energy conversion efficiency of 6.01%, a considerable short-circuit photocurrent of 15.33 mA cm-2, and a low charge-transfer resistance of 1.5 Ω cm2. The overall performance of PPY-Co-C is superior to the carbon counterparts and comparable with the platinum reference, rendering them efficient and promising counter electrode materials for DSCs.