An international team of female scientists from Ca' Foscari University Venice, Luleå University of Technology (Sweden), Italian National Research Council and Linköping University (Sweden) has created a new material capable of absorbing the full amount of solar radiation while retaining the accumulated heat.

The project aims to produce new materials capable of fully absorbing solar radiation, resulting in ultra-warm surfaces for various applications, including energy-efficient water desalination and cooking food in isolated areas of high insolation. The invention was presented in a scientific paper published in Nature Communications.

Currently, water desalination is an extremely energy-intensive process, but it is of paramount importance in regions with drinking water shortages, the extent of which is increasing year by year due to global warming.

"The new material is characterized by high porosity and special electronic properties, thanks to which it is able to absorb the entirety of solar radiation, and at the same time not to disperse the accumulated heat," explains Alberto Vomiero, professor of materials science at Ca' Foscari, "As a result, the surface exceeds 100 °C after only four minutes of irradiation with sunlight. The new material has been tested for desalination using artificial sunlight achieving excellent performance and a surface temperature of 50 °C in contact with water."

"The main novelty of our research," adds Elisa Moretti, professor of inorganic chemistry at Ca' Foscari, "consists in having realized an extremely simple system compared to other systems for water evaporation using sunlight, thanks to the light absorption and water transport functionalities, which make the new material a 'sponge' that can heat up very quickly and keep its temperature high."