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In recent years, photothermal interface water evaporation technology has shown great application prospects due to its advantages of sustainability and high efficiency. With the rapid development of this frontier field, a variety of photothermal materials have been developed and widely explored. Among them, polyphenol-based photothermal materials are drawing great attention in the development of high-performance interface evaporators with their advantages of being green, economical, versatile, and scalable, leading the next hotspot and frontier. Therefore there is an urgent need to update the wider scientific community on recent advances in this field. In this review, three distinct functions of polyphenols including adhesion, secondary reactivity and photothermal properties are first discussed, since these functions are vital for designing photothermal interface evaporation systems (PIES). Furthermore, structure–activity relationships and the unique advantages of polyphenols in constructing PIES are emphasized in this part. Subsequently, according to the main functions of polyphenols in PIES, the roles of polyphenols are introduced and categorized into four application forms: (a) as intermediate layers to introduce photothermal materials; (b) realizing hydrophilic modification in PIES; (c) as photothermal materials without substrates in PIES; (d) as photothermal coatings. Then some representative applications of polyphenols such as achieving confinement capillarity, designing complex 3D evaporators, and constructing multifunctional PIES are highlighted, which can further exhibit the distinct advantages of green polyphenol-based photothermal materials in improving the water evaporation performance. Finally, the challenges and opportunities for the future development of polyphenol-based interfacial water treatment for freshwater production are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underwater superoleophobic and underoil superhydrophobic materials have distinct advantages for switchable oil–water separation. Although some strategies have been developed to fabricate these materials, harsh conditions such as high temperature and pressure, abundant harmful organic solvents and complicated devices are usually needed, limiting their practical applications. Moreover, due to the high adhesion properties of some oils such as crude oil, the anti-viscous oil-fouling performance of usual superwetting material is still unsatisfactory. Herein, based on the corrosion process and mussel-inspired surface coating, we have developed a mild and eco-friendly route to transform iron meshes into underwater superoleophobic and underoil superhydrophobic materials for switchable high viscosity oil–water separation. The corrosion process can generate microsphere-nanosheet structures (MNS) composed of microspheres and abundant nanosheet arrays on the iron mesh surface, while the subsequent mussel-inspired surface coating can form a compact layer to protect the MNS from damage, finally endowing the resultant mesh with durable underwater superoleophobicity and underoil superhydrophobicity. Significantly, the resultant mesh exhibits excellent anti-crude oil-fouling properties, and can separate various oil–water mixtures with high efficiency (all above 98%). Moreover, after immersion in acidic or basic solutions, the wetting properties of the mesh showed no apparent variation, demonstrating that the mesh possesses a desirable environmental stability. According to the dual superlyophobic properties of the as-prepared mesh in water–oil systems, a dual-channel device has been designed to realize the continuous separation of the crude oil–water mixture with high efficiency (above 93% after 30 cycles). This strategy may open a new avenue to prepare high-performance separation materials for viscosity oil–water separation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]