Tailoring oxygen-vacancy abundance in plasmonic semiconductors for co-enhanced solar evaporation and volatile organic...

Solar water evaporation systems face persistent challenges from concurrent-evaporative volatile organic compounds (VOCs) contamination. To address this, we develop an acid-modulated hydrothermal strategy that engineers oxygen vacancy (O_V)-enriched surfaces on plasmonic W₁₈O₄₉ nanowires. This design establishes a triple synergistic mechanism: (i) O_V function as efficient sites for atmospheric O₂ capture-enrichment-activation at the vapor-liquid interface; (ii) Ambient O₂ is maximally utilized to drive accelerated photogeneration of reactive oxygen species (ROS); (iii) enhancement of optimizing localized surface plasmon resonance effect and plasmonic charge transfer kinetics mitigates photocatalytic activity limitations arising from rapid electron density depletion. Herein, in contrast to O_V-deficient tungsten oxide, the optimized rich-O_V-W₁₈O₄₉/MF (R-O_V-W₁₈O₄₉/MF) evaporator integrates photothermal-photocatalytic functionalities, simultaneously achieving a water evaporation rate of 1.31 kg m^-2 h^-1 (efficiency of 85.9 %) and enhancing phenolic VOCs removal efficiency to 91.3 % with long-term stability (>100 h) under 1-sun illumination. By synergistically leveraging atmospheric O₂ at the vapor-liquid interface and surface-abundant O_Vs as catalytic drivers, this strategy amplifies photogenerated electrons accumulation, ROS generation and interfacial photocatalytic purification, there by offering an efficient solution for water scarcity alleviation and pollution remediation.