Efficient Solar Steam Generation of Carbon Black Incorporated Hyper-Cross-Linked Polymer Composites

The creation of porous photothermal materials with high solar absorption and conversion efficiency is essential for the fabrication of efficient solar-driven interfacial evaporation devices. Herein, we demonstrate a strategy for scalable fabrication of solar steam generators based on hyper-cross-linked polymers (HCPs) in situ doped with carbon black (named C-[BzMim]Cl-co-PhH and C-[BzPy]Br-co-PhH). The monolithic HCPs composites consist of a hyper-cross-linked polymer skeleton and randomly distributed carbon black particles, which take advantage of both highly abundant porosity of HCPs and excellent light absorption of carbon black to create solar steam generators in a facile one-step preparation. By combining with their good thermal insulation (C-[BzMim]Cl-co-PhH 0.168 W m–1 K–1 and C-[BzPy]Br-co-PhH 0.123 W m–1 K–1) in wet conditions, the HCPs composites show high photothermal conversion performance with efficiencies of 85.2% and 88.4% for C-[BzMim]Cl-co-PhH and C-[BzPy]Br-co-PhH under 1 sun illumination, respectively. Moreover, the HCPs composites also exhibit excellent salt-resistance performance in solar steam generation (SSG), and the purified water can be used as domestic water. On the basis of such a simple and scalable fabrication approach as well as desired SSG performance, it is suggested that the HCPs composites may have great potentials as promising solar steam generators for real applications.