Solar water evaporation technology has become one of the promising ways for seawater desalination by excellent energy capture and efficient solar-thermal conversion. However, some challenges still restrict its further industrial development, such as low flexibility, non-portability, and insufficient energy utilization, salt crystallization problems. In this work, hierarchical MoS2 nanosheets coupled with MXene (MoS2-MXene) is constructed and formed into a film with foldability and portability for solar water evaporation. Improved evaporation rate (2.5 kg m(-2) h(-1)) is observed due to enhanced energy capture from a folded 3D solar evaporation system. Meanwhile, the outstanding evaporation performance (3.2 kg m(-2) h(-1)) is realized because of gradient heating from a hydrophobic MoS2-MXene@PF (MoS2- MXene@Paraffin) under one sun. During the evaporation of high-concentration NaCl solution (20 wt%), the hydrophobic layer is observed to become a salt crystallization site for salt generation. After long-term and multiple testing, no salt crystallization was found at the evaporation site, maintaining a stable evaporation rate. More interesting, MoS2-MXene@PF can be also succeeded as a solar thermal pack for storing heat through the phase change material paraffin (PF). This work provides a new solution to realize excellent energy capture for solar desalination and solar thermal storage. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Transition metal sulfides are considered as a kind of promising anode for lithium ion batteries due to their high theoretical capacity, but their further development are still greatly hampered by their volume expansion and electrical conductivity problems. Here, hollow spindle Ni-doped Co9S8@ZnS composites are synthesized by a simple two-steps hydrothermal method. The unique hollow structure, multi-component synergistic effect as well as effective ion doping can improve the comprehensive performance. When the as-obtained composites are used for the lithium ion batteries, which exhibit an ultra-long cycle performance. The capacity of 585 mAh/g can be maintained at 0.1 A/g after a long cycling of 1000 cycles. Even when the current density is raised to 1 A/g, the composites exhibit a high reversible discharge capacity of 758 mAh/g after 500 cycles.

Multifunctional metal-organic supramolecular hydrogels have achieved great progress nowadays. However, their applications in aqueous batteries for flexible energy storage devices remain limited due to their unsatisfactory mechanical properties. Here, we report a rapid formation of supramolecular hydrogel by adenosine 5'-monophosphate (AMP) and manganese ions (Mn2+). Additionally, the AMP-Mn hydrogel is combined with chemical cross-linking poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) polymer networks to form an AMP-Mn/PVA hybrid hydrogel, which effectively solves the problems with regard to the mechanical properties and stability of metal-organic supramolecular hydrogels as well as self-healing of tough chemical cross-linking polymer networks. The AMP-Mn/PVA hybrid hydrogel served as the hydrogel electrolyte to fabricate flexible Zn-MnO2 batteries, which exhibit fast ion conductivity, excellent electrochemical stability, and robust mechanical strength, indicating feasible practical application prospects. This investigation provides a promising opportunity for the application of metal-organic supramolecular hydrogels in the field of energy storage.