High-yield solar-driven atmospheric water harvesting of metal–organic-framework-derived nanoporous carbon with fast-diffusion water channels

Solar-driven, sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) offers a cost-effective solution to freshwater scarcity in arid areas. Creating AWH devices capable of performing multiple adsorption–desorption cycles per day is crucial for increasing water production rates matching human water requirements. However, achieving rapid-cycling AWH in passive harvesters has been challenging due to sorbents’ slow water adsorption–desorption dynamics. Here we report an MOF-derived nanoporous carbon, a sorbent endowed with fast sorption kinetics and excellent photothermal properties, for high-yield AWH. The optimized structure (40% adsorption sites and ~1.0 nm pore size) has superior sorption kinetics due to the minimized diffusion resistance. Moreover, the carbonaceous sorbent exhibits fast desorption kinetics enabled by efficient solar-thermal heating and high thermal conductivity. A rapid-cycling water harvester based on nanoporous carbon derived from metal–organic frameworks can produce 0.18 L kgcarbon−1 h−1 of water at 30% relative humidity under one-sun illumination. The proposed design strategy is helpful to develop high-yield, solar-driven AWH for advanced freshwater-generation systems.