Solar-Driven Interfacial Evaporation: Advances and Opportunities

Solar-driven interfacial evaporation (SDIE) is a desalination technology based on interface heating and evaporation, which provides a potential strategy for developing green, environmentally protective, and economically efficient desalination. By now, the evaporation performances of solar-driven interfacial evaporation systems have been significantly improved due to the developments of photothermal materials and evaporator structures. Herein, the up-to-date approaches and results are summarized and elaborated on the mechanism of efficient photothermal conversion achieved by photothermal materials. The principle of enhancing the evaporation performance of SDIE systems has been systematically studied, and the existing feasible salt-resistant strategies for long-term desalination are summarized. Finally, the current challenges and outlooks of SDIE technology are discussed, providing a possible path for the development of this technology.