Continuous Transformation in Spatially Coregulated Hollow Filaments for Water-Powered Energy.

Abstract

The growing demand for efficient water energy and resource management presents critical challenges to address pollution, energy, and resource extraction, as current methods suffer from high energy consumption, inefficiencies and environmental impact. The key lies in the development of coregulated materials structure and associated physical-chemical properties, enabling efficient fluid management and molecular interactions crucial for advancing water-power technologies. Herein, we develop hydrogel hollow filaments using a sustainable continuous-assembly metamorphic (CAM) approach that achieves nonequilibrium hierarchical assembly, delivering control over conformational structure and attributes for integral water-power innovations. This design principle of self-organization transformation underpins collective properties and addresses prevalent fluidic perturbation and breakup issues in filament manufacturing. CAM hollow filaments demonstrate auto-pumping differentiated ionic interaction, with key advancements including ∼1000% improvement in thermopower for energy harvesting, ∼90% efficiency in trace-lithium ions collection. This work marks a new methodology of clean energy transition and resource sustainability, while aligning with the broader goals of clean energy and economic sustainability.