Broadband Nickel Sulfide/Nickel Foam-Based Solar Evaporator for Highly Efficient Water Purification and Electricity Generation

Abstract

Solar water evaporation is an economical and sustainable solution to produce clean water via the heat localization of photothermal conversion. However, it remains a great challenge for the full optimization of thermal management to improve the solar-to-vapor efficiency. Herein, we report a broadband semiconductor foam architecture that is simply created by in situ sulfuration of nickel foam (NF) to the vertically aligned growth of Ni3S2 nanosheet arrays (Ni3S2/NF) and demonstrate the synergetic thermal management during solar evaporation for simultaneous clean water and electricity generation. This solar steaming system presents a high water evaporation rate of 1.29 kg m–2 h–1 with a photothermal conversion efficiency of 87.2% under 1 sun irradiation, allowing it to behave as a universal solar water purification system to effectively distill various water sources (seawater, river water, strong acid/alkaline water, and organic dye wastewater) for clean water production. In the meantime, the synergetic thermoelectric power generation during solar evaporation is realized by using the thermoelectric module as the thermal insulator, achieving a maximum output power of 0.175 W m–2 under 1 sun. This work offers an effective avenue for thermal management and synergic utilization of solar evaporation to produce clean water and electricity.