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A perspective on bio-inspired interfacial systems for solar clean-water generation

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Abstract

With rapid growth of human population and decreasing labefaction of our environment, the usable fresh water is facing severe pollution and global shortage. Bio-inspired engineering and biotemplate-directed engineering thus offer great promise in clean water generation, including desalination, decontamination, and disinfection. This perspective begins with an introduction of solar energy-based interfacial evaporation system inspired by the natural systems of organisms, and then provides a review of the development and recent progress of the interfacial evaporation system for clean water generation. The long-term outlook in this field of clean water generation using bio-inspired interfacial systems is also discussed.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the financial support from the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFB0406100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 21401129, 51521004, 51420105009, and 51873105), the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (Grant No. 14ZR1423300), and the Zhi-Yuan Endowed fund from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Rd, Shanghai, 200240, P. R. China

    Rui Feng, Yiming Qiao & Chengyi Song

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  1. Rui Feng
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  2. Yiming Qiao
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  3. Chengyi Song
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Correspondence to Chengyi Song.

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Rui Feng and Yiming Qiao equally contributed to this paper.

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Feng, R., Qiao, Y. & Song, C. A perspective on bio-inspired interfacial systems for solar clean-water generation. MRS Communications 9, 3–13 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2019.17

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