Facile Preparation of Three-Dimensional MoS₂ Aerogels for Highly Efficient Solar Desalination

Aerogels, with porous channels for water supply and vapor escape, can provide many inherent advantages in solar desalination and wastewater treatment. For the first time, this work demonstrates the preparation of a novel three-dimensional (3D) MoS2-based aerogel with high porosity and mechanical stability by a facile strategy for solar desalination. This 3D MoS2 aerogel has an excellent light-absorbing efficiency of over 95% within the whole solar spectrum range, enabling a high evaporation efficiency of 88.0% under a low solar irradiation of 1.0 kW m–2 and superhigh evaporation efficiencies of over 90% under a slightly enhanced solar irradiation of 1.5–3.0 kW m–2 as well as a remarkable desalination performance. In addition, the excellent mechanical stability of this MoS2 aerogel renders it to be reused for at least 10 cycles with stable water productivity. Because of its 3D architectures with high porosity and easy separation, this MoS2-based aerogel also provides promising applications in solar-driven water purification, sterilization, and so forth.