Multifunctional wood-based hydrogels for wastewater treatment and interfacial solar steam generation

Elaborately designing multifunctional energy conversion materials is vital to promoting renewable energy conversion. Herein, we report a novel approach in which photocatalytic materials and photothermal components are embedded simultaneously into porous delignified wood to construct wood-based hybrid hydrogels for water decontamination, hydrogen generation and freshwater production. Well-designed all-in-one system elaborately interfaces hydrogen-evolving semiconductor CdS with MoSe2 that functions as co-catalyst and also possesses photothermal effect to simultaneously drive the removal of pollutants, hydrogen production and solar steam generation with high efficiency. The multifunctional system demonstrates a hydrogen evolution rate of 9.7 mmol g–1 h−1 and a high solar evaporation rate of 1.92 kg m−2 h−1 with an energy conversion efficiency up to 90.7% under one sun illumination. The encapsulation of photothermal-assisted photocatalytic systems with hydrogels effectively prevents toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from being evaporated without deteriorating the solar steam generation performance. This study provides new insights into the rational design of novel multifunctional materials for environmental remediation and energy sustainability.