The water cycle not only sustains the freshwater resources essential for human survival but also harbors vast potential for energy and strategic material development. A critical frontier in green energy research under the ‘dual carbon’ goals lies in achieving integrated clean water production, sustainable energy output, and critical metal extraction within limited freshwater and high-salinity environments. Current desalination and lithium extraction technologies face persistent challenges, including high energy consumption, significant water usage, and difficulties in process integration. To address these issues, a team led by Professor Wang Hongzhi and Researcher Hou Chengyi from the College of Materials Science and Engineering at Donghua University has proposed an ‘evaporation-driven functional textile’ strategy. By synergistically regulating interfacial charges and coupling multilayer structures, their approach enables coordinated harvesting of water, electricity, and lithium powered solely by evaporation.
Recently, this research achievement was published in the international journal Advanced Materials (2025, 10.1002/adma.202506956) under the title ‘Evaporation-Driven Fabric for Synergistic Water-Electricity-Lithium Co-Production.’ The paper's first authors are Lin Yujie, a master's student at our university, and Hu Yunhao, a doctoral student. The corresponding author is Researcher Hou Chengyi.
(Evaporation-driven functional fabrics achieve multifunctional integration through a three-layer synergistic design, enabling solar-thermal evaporation, continuous power generation, and efficient lithium extraction.)
This work integrates the synergistic utilization of ‘water, electricity, and lithium’ within a single fabric platform through a three-layer functional structure driven by evaporation: the carbon black photothermal layer efficiently absorbs solar energy to drive water evaporation, yielding clean freshwater; the adsorption layer achieves highly selective lithium capture via a unique ion sieving effect; and the Al₂O₃ thermal insulation layer effectively minimizes heat loss, ensuring stable and efficient system operation. The three-layer synergistic structure creates an asymmetric charge interface that generates a stable water-to-electricity conversion effect during evaporation, endowing the fabric with continuous power generation capability. In simulated salt lake brine testing, the fabric achieved an evaporation rate of 1.42 kgm⁻²h⁻¹ and a stable current output of 7.7 μAcm⁻², with lithium adsorption capacity reaching 40.87 mgm⁻². After eight cycles, it maintained 93.2% recovery efficiency. Field testing further demonstrated that the fabric can simultaneously produce water and extract lithium under continuous 8-hour sunlight exposure, successfully powering low-power sensors. The produced water meets WHO drinking water standards, offering a novel solution for the sustainable development of green energy and strategic resources.
This study has realized the integrated and synergistic utilization of water, electricity, and lithium within a multifunctional system, offering a novel technological pathway for addressing the challenges of desalination and critical resource recovery from salt lakes and seawater. The developed functional textile not only opens up possibilities for the sustainable development of green energy and strategic resources but also lays a theoretical foundation for the design of future intelligent energy-environment-resource coupled systems. This research was supported by programs including the Young Faculty Research and Innovation Capacity Enhancement Program of Central Universities and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
