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Utilizing plasmonic nano-particles/structures for solar water evaporation has aroused increasing interest; however, large-scale methods are desired to boost the efficiency and improve the practicality of solar steam generation. We developed a membrane-supported floating solar steam generation system based on graphene oxide and a multiscale plasmonic nanostructure; the latter is a micrometer-sized colloidosome that was assembled from hollow and porous Ag/Au nanocubes. By taking advantage of multiscale plasmonic coupling of the particles, an extremely high solar thermal conversion efficiency up to 92% at 10 kW·m-2 (with a water evaporation rate reaching 12.96 kg·m-2·h-1) can be achieved. The TiO2 nanoparticle-modified floating system is also capable of high-efficiency dye degradation in organic-polluted water, rendering such a membrane system recyclable and scalable for practical and versatile solar-driven generation of clean water.

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Publication history
Copyright
Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 27 September 2017
Revised: 06 December 2017
Accepted: 10 December 2017
Published: 02 August 2018
Issue date: July 2018

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2017

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21475125 and 21175125), the Hundred Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry (No. 110000R387).

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