Carbonized Tree-Like Furry Magnolia Fruit-Based Evaporator Replicating the Feat of Plant Transpiration.

It has long been an aspirational goal to create artificial evaporators that allow omnidirectional energy absorptance, adequate water supply, and fast vapor transportation, replicating the feat of plant transpiration, to solve the global water crisis. This work reveals that magnolia fruits, as a kind of tree-like living organism, can be outstanding 3D tree-like evaporators through a simple carbonization process. The arterial pumping, branched diffusion, and confined evaporation are achieved by the "trunk," "branches," and "leaves," respectively, of the mini tree. The mini tree possesses omnidirectional high light absorptance with minimized heat loss and gains energy from the environment. Water confined in the fruit possesses reduced vaporization enthalpy and transports quickly following the Murray's law. A record-high vapor generation rate of 1.22 kg m-2 h-1 in dark and 3.15 kg m-2 h-1 under 1 sun illumination is achieved under the assistance of the gully-like furry surface. The "absorption of nutrients" enables the fruit to recover valuable heavy metals as well as to produce clean water from wastewater efficiently. These findings not only reveal the hidden talent of magnolia fruits as cheap materials for vapor generation but also inspire future development of high-performance, full-time, and all-weather vapor generation and water treatment devices.

Synthesis of TiO2@g-C3N4 core-shell nanorod arrays with Z-scheme enhanced photocatalytic activity under visible light.

Novel rutile TiO2@g-C3N4 core-shell photocatalysts were synthesized by a facile saturated aqueous solution method. The composites were further characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), high-resolution transmission microscopy (HRTEM), UV-visible light diffusion reflectance spectrometry (DRS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and so on. The results indicated that an ultrathin layer of g-C3N4 was in-situ fabricated over the surface of rutile TiO2 nanorod. The rutile TiO2@ g-C3N4 core-shell structures showed much higher photo-current and photocatalytic activity for Rhodamine B (RhB) degradation under visible irradiation. The enhanced performance was attributed to the high separation efficiency of photo-induced carriers via a Z-scheme form.