Researchers at National Taiwan University successfully prepared a nanofiber membrane—purple tungsten oxide/polylactic acid fiber membrane (WWO2.72/PLA) through a new nanometer to submicrometer ultrafine fiber processing method.
Solar energy is a kind of clean energy, and it is inexhaustible and inexhaustible. Statistics show that the annual energy consumption of the whole world is only equal to the solar energy that shines on the earth for one day. In other words, sunlight provides us with enough renewable energy. Not only that, sunlight has the potential to be converted into heat. Therefore, solar energy is widely used in residential heating, seawater desalination, sewage treatment, and steam generation. However, materials with low cost and high light-to-heat conversion efficiency still need to be explored. That is to say, the development and preparation of photothermal materials still face many challenges. All in all, the development of high-efficiency photothermal materials is a very important issue. Only by solving this problem can we obtain photothermal materials with higher solar-to-thermal energy conversion efficiency and more efficient water evaporation performance.
Researchers at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology have successfully fabricated a nanofibrous membrane—mainly obtained by reducing tungsten oxide/polylactic acid by melt electrospinning. Among them, the tungsten oxide used is purple tungsten oxide – a metal oxide with strong near-infrared (NIR) light absorbing ability. Therefore, there is no doubt that the NIR light-to-heat conversion performance of the obtained nanofibrous film is improved. Based on this, the researchers incorporated nano-violet tungsten oxide particles into the polylactic acid matrix through melt processing, and then extruded the compound into wires using a single-screw extruder. Afterwards, fibrous membranes were fabricated from the extruded lines of purple tungsten oxide/polylactic acid composites by melt electrospinning. It has to be said that the cost of preparing nanofibrous membranes by melt electrospinning is low and effective. In addition, this process does not add chemicals that are harmful to the environment, which is conducive to environmental protection.
Immediately afterwards, the researchers applied the obtained fiber membrane to practice. They design a fused electrospun purple tungsten oxide/polylactic acid fiber membrane floating on water with surface hydrophobicity for steam generation based on the concept of a solar-heating-based interface. The practical results show that the water evaporation efficiency of the photothermal fiber membrane containing purple tungsten oxide nanoparticles (7wt%) reaches about 81%, which is higher than that of pure polylactic acid fiber membrane (PLA fiber membrane). The research results provide ideas for the development of new photothermal fiber membranes, that is, the development of new photothermal fiber membranes that can enhance the performance of light-driven water evaporation, so that they can be effectively used in the fields of water treatment and desalination.
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