Morphology-Engineered MoS2/Hollow Carbon Heteroarchitectures Enabling Dual Synergy for Solar-Triggered Photothermal Water-Electricity Nexus

Herein, we present a topological engineering strategy to construct hierarchical MoS2-decorated hollow carbon heterostructures that synergistically integrate efficient solar-thermal conversion with exceptional thermoelectric properties.

The precisely designed bilayer hollow architecture, featuring morphology-tailored nanocarbons (nanospheres, CNS vs. nanobowls, CNB) coupled with low-dimensional MoS2 nanosheets, achieves ultrabroadband light absorption (>97%) and interfacial thermal confinement through multidimensional photon trapping. The optimized composite membrane demonstrates excellent evaporation rates (1.552 kg·m–2·h–1) and unprecedented photothermoelectric performance (121 mV open-circuit voltage, 0.0598 mW·cm–2 power density) under 1 sun irradiation, enabled by the dual synergy of sulfur vacancy-enhanced carrier transport in MoS2 and continuous conductive pathways within the carbon matrix.