Salt Mitigation Strategies of Solar-Driven Interfacial Desalination

Solar-driven interfacial desalination (SDID), which is based on localized heating and interfacial evaporation, provides an opportunity for developing environmentally friendly and cost-effective seawater thermal desalination. However, localized heating and rapidly generated interfacial steam may cause salt to accumulate on the evaporator's surface and block the channel of steam evaporation. Salt accumulation inevitably reduces the light absorption and service period of the solar absorber, resulting in a significant decrease in evaporation efficiency over time. Salt accumulation makes it difficult to produce SDID devices with high energy efficiency and long-term stability for large-scale use in remote poverty-stricken areas. Therefore, the exploration of novel and effective strategies for addressing salt accumulation through both material design and structural engineering has attracted more attention in recent years. This review presents an overview of the state-of-the-art advancements in salt-resistant photothermal evaporation and discusses the critical issues for achieving salt mitigation SDID, focusing on the classification of salt mitigation strategies based on photothermal evaporation configurations, the basic mechanism of salt mitigation, and the architectural design of photothermal materials. Finally, the important challenges and prospects of SDID are discussed to providing a meaningful roadmap to efficient salt mitigation SDID.