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Synergistic realization of high efficiency solar desalination and carbon dioxide reduction

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Abstract

Methods of seawater desalination and carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction using clean and renewable energy have attracted much attention withing the reducing fresh water and growing CO2 concentration. Here, we propose a synergistic method for solar-driven desalination and CO2 reduction at the surface of sea using a three-dimensional titanium oxide-gold semiconductor/metal (TiO2-Au NW/NPs (NW: nanowire, NP: nanoparticle)) photothermal conversion membrane that can efficiently harvest a broad solar spectrum (200 to 2500 nm, 94%) to undertake the conversion of light-to-heat and light-to-electricity. The TiO2-Au NW/NPs membrane demonstrated a high solar vapor conversion efficiency of ∼ 90%, CO2 reduction yields of 0.066 µmol·cm2 CH4 and 0.015 µmol·cm−2 CO within 5 h. In addition, the membrane efficiently evaporated seawater with different salt concentrations to produce drinking water which meet World Health Organization (WHO) and US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. This work provides an integrated solution for solar desalination and CO2 reduction at the surface of sea to reduce the harm to marine life caused by ocean acidification while producing pure water.

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Acknowledgements

This research is partially supported financially by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 62105048), Science and Technology Research Program of Chongqing Education Commission (No. KJQN202100633), the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (No. 2021M693768), Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing (No. cstc2021jcyj-bshX0239), and Open Project of the National Laboratory of Solid-State Microstructure (No. M34048).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Optoelectronic Engineering, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, 400065, China

    Xiaoying Song, Pei Wang, Yi Huang, U-Fat Chio, Fang Wang, Guanyu Wang & Wei Wang

  2. Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology, Chinese Academy of Science, Chongqing, 400714, China

    Xiaoqiang Zhu

  3. School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China

    Bin Liu

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  1. Xiaoying Song
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  2. Pei Wang
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  3. Yi Huang
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Correspondence to Yi Huang or Guanyu Wang.

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Song, X., Wang, P., Huang, Y. et al. Synergistic realization of high efficiency solar desalination and carbon dioxide reduction. Nano Res. 16, 10530–10536 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5546-9

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