High‐Yield, Green, and Scalable Solar‐Powered Interfacial Evaporation of Multibioinspired Hierarchical‐Integrated Nanofibrous Wood Surface with Sustainable Steam Escape

Abstract

Solar‐powered interfacial evaporation offers a cost‐effective technique for freshwater scarcity in arid areas. However, further performance improvements have encountered bottlenecks due to the lack of more simplified material design and optimized functional structures resulting in a trade‐off between photothermal conversion and steam transport. Herein, a high‐yield, green, and scalable solar‐driven evaporator with multibioinspired hierarchical‐integrated architecture‐modified wood surface via highly oriented nanofibers is developed. Furthermore, inspired by natural biological structures, a 3D bionic wood cribs structure (BWS) evaporator on the basis of 2D bionic butterfly scales structure (BS) with efficient light absorption, light‐to‐heat conversion, evaporation rate, as well as recyclable steam escape is integrally fabricated. As a result, this well‐designed BWS evaporator shows a high solar absorption of 96%, and a greatly promoted evaporation rate of 1.8 kg m−2 h−1 under 1 sun illumination, leading to a 23.3% higher than that of the BS. More importantly, the effective convection of the BWS from sides and surface is demonstrated that promotes sustainable steam escape to achieve continuous water evaporation. This proof of concept work provides an insightful attempt to develop scalable evaporation systems with green biomass‐derived resources and functional biomimetic structure.