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Turning Dead Leaves Into An Active Multifunctional Material As Evaporator, Photocatalyst, And Bioplastic, Siyuan Fang, Xingyi Lyu, Tian Tong, Aniqa Ibnat Lim, Tao Li, Jiming Bao, Yun Hang Hu

Michigan Tech Publications

Large numbers of leaves fall on the earth each autumn. The current treatments of dead leaves mainly involve completely destroying the biocomponents, which causes considerable energy consumption and environmental issues. It remains a challenge to convert waste leaves into useful materials without breaking down their biocomponents. Here, we turn red maple dead leaves into an active three-component multifunctional material by exploiting the role of whewellite biomineral for binding lignin and cellulose. Owing to its intense optical absorption spanning the full solar spectrum and the heterogeneous architecture for effective charge separation, films of this material show high performance in solar water …