Carbon materials for enhanced photothermal conversion: Preparation and applications on steam generation

Abstract

Photothermal conversion attracted lots of attention in the past years and sorts of materials were explored to enhance photothermal efficiency. In the past years, solar-driven desalination by photothermal conversion was proposed to release the shortage of fresh water and then it was considered much more important to prepare photothermal materials on large scales with high performance and low cost. In this review, we summarized the works on carbon-based photothermal materials in the past years, including the preparation as well as their application in steam generation. From these works, we give an outlook on the difficulties and chances of how to design and prepare carbon-based photothermal materials.