Densified Photothermal Membrane

Rejects ions & polar VOCs

Confined water-selective channels enable high evaporation rates while efficiently rejecting concentrated ions and strongly polar VOCs, addressing challenging complex wastewater purification.

Li, Jie · Jia, Qiang · Shijie, Xing · Bi, Jingtao · Wang, Lei · Guo, Zhiyuan · Wang, Jing Jing · Zhang, Panpan · Ji, Zhiyong · Qu, Liangti

Nature Communications 2026

Specifications

Evaporation rate

{'zh': '2.58', 'en': '2.58'} kg m-2 h-1

Stable operation time

{'zh': '200', 'en': '200'} h

Advantages

High rejection of ions and VOCs

The synergistic effect of steric hindrance and chemical selectivity in confined channels preferentially transports water while excluding highly concentrated ions and strongly polar VOCs, enabling clean water harvesting.

Stable under hypersaline conditions

Retains stable performance for over 200 h in various near-saturated hypersaline solutions (20 wt% salinity), avoiding performance decay due to salt crystallization.

Handles strongly polar VOCs

Enables clean water harvesting from common (e.g., benzene, toluene, phenol) and strongly polar VOCs (e.g., ethanol, isopropanol, n-butanol) even at very high concentrations.

Applications

• Solar water purification：Produces clean water directly from complex wastewater using solar-driven interfacial evaporation.
• Complex wastewater treatment：Purifies chemical wastewater containing high concentrations of ions and strongly polar VOCs.
• Membrane distillation：Replaces hydrophobic membranes in conventional membrane distillation with confined channels for water-selective transport.
• Photothermal conversion：Efficiently converts solar energy to heat for interfacial water evaporation.