Research progress of solar thermal evaporation materials and systems

Solar energy is a kind of clean energy, and the efficient usage of solar energy can effectively alleviate the challenges of lacking energy source and environment pollution, and also plays an important role in the process of realizing carbon peak and carbon neutral. For the last few years, growing maturity of the photothermal conversion technology, great breakthroughs have been achieved in the desalination field using solar energy. This paper mainly summarized the development trend of carbon-based materials, metal materials, semiconductor materials and efficient photothermal conversion technology in solar thermal evaporation systems, and analyzed the main problems in the field of photothermal conversion, such as huge cost, low efficiency and small scope of application. By comparing different kinds of photothermal conversion materials and methods, it provides useful guidance and development direction for the design of high-efficiency photothermal conversion devices in the field of photothermal conversion and seawater evaporation.