The escalating contamination of seawater with radioactive cesium ions (Cs+) poses severe environmental and health challenges, requiring remediation strategies that are both efficient and sustainable. However, current approaches often suffer from limited selectivity, low adsorption capacity, and poor adaptability in complex ionic environments. Herein, a multifunctional Li+ - intercalated vermiculite-based photothermal aerogel evaporator is designed to synergistically couple interfacial solar evaporation (ISE) with highly selective Cs+ capture. Solardriven interfacial evaporation increases the local chemical potential of hydrated ions, while the negatively charged vermiculite nanochannels electrostatically facilitate Cs+ desolvation and intercalation, enabling active ion pumping instead of passive adsorption. Consequently, the Li-V@CNTs aerogel exhibits an excellent evaporation rate of 3.33 kg.m(-2).h(-1) under 1 sun illumination, exceeding typical cellulose or graphene oxide systems (approximate to 2.2-2.8 kg.m(-2).h(-1)). As a Cs+ sorbent, it achieves capacities up to 450 mg.g(-1) in Cs+-spiked seawater, outperforming zeolite A (approximate to 51 mg.g(-1)) and representative Zn-based metal-organic frameworks (approximate to 221 mg.g(-1)). Integrated into a sunflower-inspired solar-tracking device, the aerogel evaporator delivers clean-water yield and Cs+ removal from real seawater. Fabricated from vermiculite and bacterial cellulose via a simple, lowtemperature process (estimated material cost approximate to US$1.5 m(-2)) and operated solely by solar energy without secondary pollution, this ion-pumping platform offers a scalable platform with strong potential for sustainable radioactive seawater remediation.

This study developed a novel encapsulation methodology for the synthesis of phase change material microcapsules based on the Pickering emulsion strategy. Cu2O nanoparticles were selected as emulsifier in this study, effectively stabilised n-Octadecane (C18) Pickering emulsions and acted as precursors for shell formation, leading to the successful formation of C18/Cu2O colloidosomes. Upon self-oxidation, Cu2O transformed to CuO, enabling crosslinking between neighbouring particles on the emulsion and forming robust microcapsule CuO shells. The resulting C18/CuO microcapsules retained a high latent heat capacity after encapsulation, indicating effective thermal storage performance and high encapsulation efficiency. The C18/CuO also demonstrated thermal reliability after repeated thermal cycling and improved charging/discharging rate as compared to pure C18, making it highly suitable for improving thermal performance in energy-efficient construction materials. Thermal energy storage foam concrete containing 20-50 % C18/CuO microcapsules was prepared. Infrared thermal imaging indicated that the C18/CuO-derived composites exhibited slower temperature rise and faster cooling response. A thermal conductivity of 0.6112 W/m K was achieved at 50 % C18/CuO inclusion, demonstrating the potential of the C18/CuO-modified foam concrete for energy efficiency applications.

Nanoparticle transport across gastrointestinal mucus remains a major bottleneck for oral drug delivery and is traditionally investigated under static conditions. However, native mucus is inherently dynamic and continuously undergoes mechanical deformation driven by peristalsis. Here, using a well-controlled hydrogel model together with in vivo validation, we demonstrate that cyclic deformation induces transient network remodeling that markedly enhances nanoparticle diffusion in mucus-like barriers. Cyclic stretching promotes pore redistribution and partial chain alignment, thereby reducing steric confinement and facilitating nanoparticle hopping between cages. Importantly, this mechanically activated transport state is reversible and rapidly diminishes once deformation ceases. Coarse-grained simulations and microstructural characterization further corroborate the deformation-induced evolution of network architecture. These findings reveal dynamic microenvironmental remodeling as a previously underappreciated regulator of nanoparticle mobility and highlight the importance of mechanical context in designing drug delivery strategies for physiological barriers.

Solar-driven desalination offers a sustainable approach to treating high-salinity brines, but the spatial coupling of water evaporation and salt crystallization in traditional evaporators causes performance degradation, and complex fabrication further limits large-scale deployment. Here, we present a scalable strategy to construct a 3D discrete wettability patterned (DWP) architecture that spatially decouples water transport, interfacial evaporation, and salt crystallization, enabling efficient freshwater production and automatic salt collection from high-salinity brine. Within the DWP architecture, superhydrophilic regions ensure continuous brine transport, while adjacent superhydrophobic regions form contact lines that enhance local evaporation. Together with the resulting temperature gradient between adjacent regions, these effects promote directional salt crystallization at hydrophilic-hydrophobic boundaries. Continuous lateral crystal growth increases the gravitational torque, while sustained wetting at the crystal base weakens interfacial adhesion, together enabling spontaneous salt detachment through a torque-balance mechanism. During a 168-h continuous desalination test with 20 wt.% brine, the DWP evaporator achieves an evaporation rate of 3.51 kg m-2 h-1 and a salt collection rate of 0.51 kg m-2 h-1. This work establishes a general architectural principle based on spatial decoupling to integrate efficient evaporation, automatic salt harvesting, and long-term stability, advancing solar desalination from passive salt-rejection toward maintenance-free resource recovery.

Interfacial solar evaporation offers a sustainable route for seawater desalination, addressing global freshwater scarcity by harnessing solar energy for efficient water evaporation. However, its performance is typically constrained by the availability and intensity of sunlight. Here, we report a novel evaporator design that overcomes this limitation by extracting substantial thermal energy from the bulk water to sustain high evaporation rates even in the absence of solar input. Through rational structural design and optimization of thermal conductivity of the evaporator support, the obtained evaporators harvest energy from the bulk water far exceeding the incident solar flux, enabling rapid evaporation under diverse weather conditions. The optimized evaporator achieves an exceptional evaporation rate of 11.15 kg m-2 h-1 under 1.0 sun. This design strategy expands the operational window of interfacial solar evaporation and offers a robust pathway toward continuous, high-efficiency desalination in real-world environments.

The surging global demand for lithium underscores the critical need for sustainable extraction technologies, particularly from salt-lake brines, which hold the majority of global lithium reserves. However, conventional solar-driven evaporation systems suffer from salt deposition, limited selectivity, and poor stability. Here, inspired by the salt management mechanism of Avicennia marina, an innovative solar evaporation system with spatially decoupled salt adsorption-secretion architecture is developed, which enables highly selective lithium adsorption from salt-lake brines. The core of this system is a spherical photothermal evaporator with multi-channel water pathways, designed to spatially separate lithium capture on the evaporator surface from the crystallization of competing salts at remote sites. Driven by solar evaporation, this unique design achieves an excellent lithium uptake capacity of 29.4 mg g(-1) and maintains stable operation in high-salinity brine (300 g L-1). Field tests demonstrate exceptional lithium selectivity (S-Li/Mg of 272.8, S-Li/Na of 236.2), substantially surpassing conventional evaporators (S-Li/Mg of 10-150, S-Li/Na of 20-120). The system directly produced battery-grade Li2CO3 (>99.7% purity) from natural brines and exhibited outstanding reusability, retaining 92.9% resource recovery efficiency over 40 operational cycles. This work offers a scalable and sustainable solar-powered strategy for lithium extraction.

Green hydrogen production by proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) powered by clean energy is a promising and environmentally friendly technology. However, it relies on a high-purity water source, which is limited in regions facing water scarcity. Here, a coupled self-sustaining solar-enabled system is reported that couples atmospheric water harvesting with PEM water electrolysis (AWH-PEMWE), offering a novel pathway for clean water generation and green hydrogen production. The atmospheric water harvester (AWH) component utilizes N and O co-doped hydrophilic ordered porous carbon, engineered with an interconnected hierarchical porous structure with prosperous channels for efficient mass transport. It enables effective interfacial solar evaporation for water release, achieving a record-high water harvesting capacity of 0.49 L kg-1 h-1 at 40% relative humidity (RH). During outdoor tests, the AWH-PEMWE system reaches a peak green hydrogen production rate of 204 mL h-1 at midday using only atmospheric water as feedstock. Remarkably, the system remains operational under ultra-low humidity conditions down to 20% RH, addressing the challenge of water availability in arid environments. Importantly, the system operates without the need for carrier gases or external energy input accessories, enabling a fully solar-driven process with zero carbon emission throughout the hydrogen production cycle.

Interfacial solar evaporation offers a green and sustainable solution to solve clean water shortages via solar-driven desalination. However, salt crystallization and accumulation on solar evaporators have become the primary hindrances to the long-term practical application of interfacial solar evaporation technology. To tackle this challenge, a photothermal evaporator with a novel parallel two-water paths strategy is developed in this study. Unlike the conventional one-way water path, which generally leads to salt accumulation at the water supply end on the evaporation surfaces, thereby limiting the lifespan of the evaporator and compromising solar evaporation performance, here, with the second parallel water supply path, the ion diffusion and distribution within the solar evaporator is reconfigured and optimized. No salt accumulation occurs on either the evaporation surfaces or the water paths, eliminating the impact of salt crystallization on evaporation performance and enabling convenient salt collection. A high and stable evaporation rate of 3.09-3.26 kg m-2 h-1 is recorded over 84 h continuous evaporation of NaCl solution (3.5 wt.%) without salt accumulation on the evaporator, making it an ideal strategy for zero liquid discharge solar evaporation.

It has been observed that the widespread presence of moisture in the atmosphere can store a large amount of latent heat energy. Moisture-electric generators (MEGs) are capable of converting this latent heat into electricity without environmental constraints. However, the key to promoting the large-scale application of MEGs lies in the development of active materials and the optimization of device structure. In this work a new type of MEG was constructed utilizing an ionic hydrogel and vermiculite-cellulose nanofiber/carbon nanotube (VM-CNF/CNT) composite membrane. The specific asymmetric structure enables a dynamic balance between moisture absorption and water evaporation, generating a humidity gradient and an ion concentration gradient within the composite membrane, thereby producing a continuous electric current. At 90% RH, a single device can generate an open-circuit voltage (VOC) of approximately 0.60 V and a continuous short-circuit current (JSC) of about 19.6 mu A cm-2. Notably, the device can provide output current to a 1 M Omega load for 150 hours. Through simple parallel configurations, the integrated modules with 15 single MEGs can generate a stable current of 750 mu A. This study presents a promising strategy for long-term and sustainable energy harvesting, and its eco-friendly, low-cost design holds great potential for self-powered sensing and wearable electronics.

Interfacial solar evaporation is a promising technology to address the global issue of water scarcity with a minimum carbon footprint. Although solar‐to‐vapor conversion efficiency has been significantly improved, it does not actually lead to high clean water production due to low vapor condensation efficiency and water collection rate, which hinders real‐world applications. Herein, an invert‐structured solar evaporation and vapor condensation device coupled with solar evaporators featuring special vertically aligned vapor diffusion channels is designed to target both high evaporation and water collection rates. Graphene oxides, carbon dots, and MXene are used to construct sophisticated nanostructure to effectively confine the thermal energy in the structure for water evaporation. The vertical channels in the evaporators allow downward vapor transportation for condensation. The bottom condenser, made of highly thermal‐conductive materials with hydrophobic coating, is cooled by bulk water underneath, accelerating the dropwise condensation processes. In addition, since vapor is pushed downward, light absorption on the top evaporation surface is not declined. Both top and bottom evaporation surfaces are activated for water evaporation. Therefore, this inverted device achieves a record‐high water‐collection rate of 2.31 kg m −2 h −1 under one sun, superior to conventional single‐stage solar evaporation systems, suggesting great potential in practical seawater desalination.

With the increasing demand for energy-efficient and multifunctional construction materials, foam concrete has attracted significant attention due to its combined structural and thermal advantages. This paper systematically reviewed the thermal performance of foam concrete, focusing on the thermal insulation mechanism and latent heat thermal energy storage (TES). Major advancements in enhancing insulation performance include gas-solid system modification, foam stabilisation, nano-insulation techniques, and the incorporation of pozzolanic and porous aggregates. The integration of phase change materials (PCMs) provides an effective solution for thermal energy storage and temperature regulation, mitigating temperature fluctuations and improving thermal comfort. Microencapsulation and porous support impregnation are critical techniques to address PCMs leakage while ensuring compatibility with the foam concrete matrix. Current thermal efficiency enhancement strategies in foam concrete primarily focus on individual techniques, either optimising thermal insulation properties or TES systems. However, research on synergistic hybrid solutions that simultaneously optimise insulative capacity, energy storage, and mechanical performance remains lacking integration. Therefore, this review aims to clarify the thermal enhancement mechanisms of each approach, providing a structured framework for hybridisation strategies that balance thermal regulation, mechanical integrity, and energy efficiency in foam concrete applications.

The rising demand for lithium, essential for energy storage, has heightened the need for efficient extraction methods from salt-lake brines, as current techniques are inefficient and energy-intensive. Here we present a facile, durable and energy-efficient approach for lithium extraction using a solar evaporation-driven ion pump. The evaporation system, composed of a porous hydrogel matrix embedded with lithium-ion sieves and featuring directional salt crystallization function, effectively separates lithium ions from other cations and accelerates lithium diffusion toward adsorption sites. Consequently, lithium adsorption kinetics (saturation time decreased from 8 h to 5 h), selectivity (from 65 to 413) and capacity (from 10.7 to 24.7 mg g-1 in salt-lake brine) are all significantly enhanced. Additionally, the designed evaporator enables zero-liquid discharge brine evaporation, ensuring long-term stable performance for freshwater production, which is used for subsequent lithium elution and battery grade Li2CO3 production. Thus, a closed-loop system is achieved, enabling sustainable cycles of lithium extraction, freshwater generation, lithium elution, absorbent regeneration, and water reuse.

Infrared PbS quantum dot (QD) photodiodes play a vital role in various applications, including photovoltaics, light-emitting diodes, lasers, and photodetectors. Despite their superior potential, high-performance all-QD homojunction photodiodes with bifacial structures have yet to be reported. Here, post-treatment ligand engineering is successfully employed to precisely tune the doping dipoles of PbS QDs, transitioning them from n-type, through intrinsic, to p-type. All-QD homojunction photodiodes solar cells with a n-i-p architecture are constructed by integrating three types of PbS QD layers of 1.37 eV bandgaps with controllable doping dipoles, which delivers a power conversion efficiency of 10.0%, among the highest values reported in PbS all-QD homojunction solar cells so far. Owing to symmetry all-QD architecture, bifacial PbS all-QDs photodiodes, using 1.37 eV bandgap PbS QDs as both n-type and p-type charge transport layers and 0.90 eV bandgap PbS QDs as intrinsic light absorber layers, achieved an almost ideal bifactor approaching 93% and decent detectivities of 1.63 x 1011 Jones from ITO illumination and 1.86 x 1011 Jones from silver nanowire (Ag NW) illumination at 1370 nm. Therefore, this work provides a facile approach for the design of bifacial all-QD homojunction photodiodes, broadening their potential applications in advanced QD optoelectronic systems.

Introducing stable gas bubbles in liquid is important for the industrial synthesis of chemicals and intermediates via multiphase reactions because of limited solubility of gaseous reactants such as H2 and O2. Herein, a bubblestabilized system is constructed via in-situ nucleation of bubbles at the surfaces of various polymer nanofibers that circumvents the repulsive interactions between gas-liquid interfaces and nanofibers. During bubble growth processes, nanofibers are self-assembled and interwoven to build spatial nanofiber network surrounding bubbles, firmly trapping bubbles in the liquid phase. Surprisingly, the immobilization of bubbles in liquid can be sustained up to 20 h. These trapped bubbles can serve as gas storage vessels to remarkably boost the multiphase reactions because of the adequate gas-liquid-solid contact sites as demonstrated by the multiphase nitroarenes reduction in contrast to the bubble-free system. Furthermore, the immobilized bubbles are almost completely utilized (98.9 %) in multiphase reactions. This work provides an enlightenment for capturing and storing bubbles in liquid towards industrial multiphase reactions.

Enhancing solar evaporation performance while minimizing material consumption is essential for advancing the practical application of interfacial solar evaporation technologies. Although introducing external airflow can significantly boost evaporation rates, it requires additional components and electricity input, compromising the simplicity, passivity and sustainability of interfacial solar evaporation. To address this challenge, Dyson sphere-like evaporators (DSEs) capable of self-generating convective flow inside the evaporator are designed. This self-generated internal airflow facilitates the removal of generated vapor from both inner and outer evaporation surfaces, thus significantly improving the evaporation rate. Notably, despite sacrificing 36% of solar light energy to generate internal convection, the DSE still achieves a much higher evaporation rate (4.08 kg m-2 h-1) compared to a typical spherical evaporator (2.04 kg m-2 h-1) which utilizes all the solar light energy directly for water evaporation. This finding suggests that future evaporator design should consider the balance between the energy used for water evaporation and convection generation for vapor removal.

Quinoid acceptor units are extremely important to phenolic resin photocatalysts for tuning charge separation and conversion utilization under solar irradiation. However, constructing quinoid acceptors in a polycondensation reaction still faces critical challenges. Here, we have developed a simple and fast strategy that allows carbon dots (CDs) with abundant oxygen-related groups to boost quinoid structure formation. Surprisingly, the obtained CD-modified phloroglucinol-glutaraldehyde (CDs-PG) resins achieve H2O2 production rates with nearly a 5-fold improvement compared to that of pristine PG resins due to the enhancement of acceptor numbers. Various characterization studies and theoretical calculations reveal that the incorporation of CDs into PG resins modifies the pathway of H2O2 photosynthesis, realizing the combination of an indirect two-electron oxygen reduction reaction and hole-induced carboxyl group oxidation to generate H2O2. This work paves a way to design ideal photocatalysts using low-cost and multifunctional CDs for highly efficient solar-to-chemical energy conversion.

Interfacial solar evaporation-based seawater desalination is regarded as one of the most promising strategies to alleviate freshwater scarcity. However, the solar evaporation rate of real seawater is significantly constricted by the ubiquitous salts present in seawater. In addition to the common issue of salt accumulation on the evaporation surface during solar evaporation, strong hydration between salt ions and water molecules leads to a lower evaporation rate for real seawater compared to pure water. Here a facile and general strategy is developed to reverse this occurrence, that is, making real seawater evaporation faster than pure water. By simply introducing specific mineral materials into the floating photothermal evaporator, ion exchange at air-water interfaces directly results in a decrease in seawater evaporation enthalpy, and consequently achieves much higher seawater evaporation rates compared to pure water. This process is spontaneously realized during seawater solar evaporation. Considering the current enormous clean water production from evaporation-based desalination plants, such an evaporation performance improvement can remarkably increase annual clean water production, benefiting millions of people worldwide.

Carbon-based materials stand out as photothermal materials for interfacial solar evaporation due to their high solar absorptance, chemical stability, adjustable structure, ease of preparation, and low cost compared to other candidate materials. Development of multifunctional carbon-based materials that can endow the fabricated evaporators with reduced energy loss and evaporation enthalpy is highly demanded to achieve extraordinary evaporation rates. Herein, high-solar-absorptivity multi-shelled hollow porous carbon nanospheres are fabricated and incorporated with an insulating hydrogel bottom layer into an integrated solar evaporator. It achieves a fast photothermal response and a remarkably high solar evaporation rate of 2.4 kg m- 2 h- 1 under one sun. Multiphysics simulation indicates that the porous multi-shelled hollow structure enables sufficient and effective interactions between water and the hydrophilic carbon surfaces, thus producing more intermediate water (IW) and lowering the evaporation enthalpy. The solar-driven water evaporation in the evaporator is probed by in-situ low-field nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation time measurements, based on which conversion of free water (FW) into IW during solar evaporation is proposed. The molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the evolution of FW clusters into IW is facilitated on the carbon surface, thus replenishing the evaporated IW and maintaining continuous high evaporation rates. The demonstrated solar evaporator exemplifies the effectiveness of structural and thermal management in enhancing solar-driven desalination.