Self-Floating Nanoporous High-Entropy Oxides with Tunable Bandgap for Efficient Solar Seawater Desalination

Nanoporous high-entropy oxide (np-HEO) powders with tunable composition are integrated with a poly(vinylidene fluoride) network to create self-floating solar absorber films for seawater desalination. By progressively increasing the element count, we obtain an optimized 9-component AlNiCoFeCrMoVCuTi-O_x. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal a remarkable reduction in its bandgap, facilitating the light-induced migration of electrons to conduction bands to generate electron–hole pairs, which recombine to produce heat. Simultaneously, the intricate light reflection and refraction pathways, shaped by the nanoporous structure, coupled with the reduced thermal conductivity attributed to the suboptimal crystalline quality of the np-HEO ensure an effective conversion of captured light into thermal energy. Consequently, all these films demonstrate an impressive absorbance rate exceeding 93% across the 250–2500 nm spectral range. Under one sun, the surface temperature of the 9-component film rapidly rises to 110 °C within 90 s with a high pure water evaporation rate of 2.16 kg m^–2 h^–1.