Solar-driven interfacial desalination (SID) offers a sustainable route for freshwater production, yet its long-term performance is compromised by salt crystallization and microbial fouling under complex marine conditions. Zwitterionic polymers offer promising nonfouling capabilities, but current zwitterionic hydrogel-based solar evaporators (HSEs) suffer from inadequate hydration and salt vulnerability. Inspired by the natural marine environmental adaptive characteristics of saltwater fish, we report a superhydrated zwitterionic poly(trimethylamine N-oxide, PTMAO)/polyacrylamide (PAAm)/polypyrrole (PPy) hydrogel (PTAP) with dedicated water channels for efficient, durable, and nonfouling SID. The directly linked N⁺ and O⁻ groups in PTMAO establish a robust hydration shell that facilitates rapid water transport while resisting salt and microbial adhesion. Integrated PAAm and PPy networks enhance mechanical strength and photothermal conversion. PTAP achieves a high evaporation rate of 2.35 kg m⁻² h⁻¹ under 1 kW m^–2 in 10 wt% NaCl solution, maintaining stable operation over 100 h without salt accumulation. Furthermore, PTAP effectively resists various foulants including proteins, bacterial, and algal adhesion. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the exceptional hydration capacity supports its nonfouling properties. This work advances the development of nonfouling HSEs for sustainable solar desalination in real-world marine environments.

Radiative cooling fabric creates a thermally comfortable environment without energy input, providing a sustainable approach to personal thermal management. However, most currently reported fabrics mainly focus on outdoor cooling, ignoring to achieve simultaneous cooling both indoors and outdoors, thereby weakening the overall cooling performance. Herein, a full-scale structure fabric with selective emission properties is constructed for simultaneous indoor and outdoor cooling. The fabric achieves 94% reflectance performance in the sunlight band (0.3–2.5 µm) and 6% in the mid-infrared band (2.5–25 µm), effectively minimizing heat absorption and radiation release obstruction. It also demonstrates 81% radiative emission performance in the atmospheric window band (8–13 µm) and 25% radiative transmission performance in the mid-infrared band (2.5–25 μm), providing 60 and 26 W m⁻² net cooling power outdoors and indoors. In practical applications, the fabric achieves excellent indoor and outdoor human cooling, with temperatures 1.4–5.5 °C lower than typical polydimethylsiloxane film. This work proposes a novel design for the advanced radiative cooling fabric, offering significant potential to realize sustainable personal thermal management.

A research team led by Chang Keke from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has developed an innovative machine learning framework (PAMCs-MP) for predicting the mechanical properties of particle-reinforced aluminum matrix composites (PAMCs). Despite limited existing datasets, the approach uses extensive pre-training on larger aluminium alloy datasets to guide multi-objective optimization tasks effectively. The model achieves high predictive accuracy, R² values of over 92% for ultimate tensile strength and over 90% for elongation, demonstrating its robustness and reliability. The platform not only accelerates the design cycle but also offers profound insights into material behaviour, facilitating the development of high-strength, ductile aluminum composites tailored to specific application needs.

A review paper by scientists at Beijing Institute of Technology reviews the current progress of hybrid magneto-acoustic actuation to address the limitations of single magnetic or acoustic actuation.