Design of polyvinyl alcohol/bacterial cellulose/sodium alginate/MXene@Polydopamine hydrogel evaporator for fresh water acquisition

Abstract In this work, a stable physically crosslinked multi-network hydrogel was constructed using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/sodium alginate (SA) mixture as the backbone framework and bacterial cellulose (BC) nanofiber as “bridging agents.” MXene@Polydopamine (MXene@PDA) composites with high oxidation resistance and light-to-heat conversion ability as photothermal components were incorporated into above hydrogel networks to build a PVA/BC/SA/MXene@PDA photothermal evaporator. The as-obtained evaporator exhibited a high evaporation rate, good cyclic stability and salt tolerance. Consequently, this evaporator not only could harvest freshwater from dye sewage but also executed efficiently seawater desalination.