Architecting a bifunctional solar evaporator of perovskite La0.5Sr0.5CoO3 for solar evaporation and degradation

Solar-driven interfacial water evaporation can efficiently utilize abundant and sustainable solar energy to alleviate the scarcity of freshwater resources, which has been recognized as one of the most attractive technologies for purifying seawater and wastewater. However, photothermal evaporation process cannot eliminate pollutions in residual wastewater. Therefore, inducing photocatalytic degradation technology into photothermal evaporation will greatly realize the concurrent freshwater collection and pollution degradation. Herein, bifunctional La0.5Sr0.5CoO3 (LSC5) solar evaporator with various architecture structures is constructed. It is demonstrated that the LSC5 photothermal catalyst has excellent solar absorption and photothermal conversion property. Furthermore, interpenetrating polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and chitosan (CS) into LSC5 can promote water transport capacity and decrease water evaporation enthalpy. Benefited from these advantages, three-dimensional (3D) solar evaporator comprised of LSC5 and PVA/CS polymer achieves a relatively high evaporation rate of 2.45 kg m(-2) h(-1) with the photothermal conversion efficiency of 93.0%. Moreover, the LSC5 displays obvious photocatalytic degradation effect on tetracycline pollutants. Therefore, this photothermal-photocatalytic degradation bifunctional hydrogel provides a promising alternative material for comprehensive water purification and pollution elimination.