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The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aenm.201400061 The effect of nanopillar texturing on the performance of InP solar cells is investigated. Maskless, lithography-free reactive ion etching of InP nanopillars improves the open-circuit voltage, reduces refl ectance over a broad spectral range, and enhances the near-bandgap response compared to a fl at, non-textured cell with comparable refl ectance in the infrared. Electron-beam induced current measurements indicate an increased effective minority carrier collection length. The response at short wavelengths decreases due to the formation of a defective surface layer with strong non-radiative recombination. Plasma oxidation and wet etching partially restore the blue response resulting in a power conversion effi ciency of 14.4%. C.B. and J.X. contributed equally to this work. InP solar cell fabrication and characterization was funded by the Bay Area Photovoltaics Consortium (BAPVC). C.B. acknowledges support from the Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation.

With the increase in water consumption and pollution resulting from the rising world population and industrial development, severe fresh water shortage has been regarded as one of the critical problems facing the world. Solar-driven water purification is an environment friendly and promising technology to address the problem. However, low photothermal conversion efficiency impedes its practical application. Herein, a natural spruce wood-based solar evaporator functionalized with zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF-8) nanoparticles and polydopamine (PDA) layers is designed, which significantly reduces the equivalent evaporation enthalpy and substantially boosts solar evaporation efficiency. The evaporation rate of the optimized wood-based evaporator reached 2.28 kg m(-2) h(-1) with a high evaporation efficiency of 87.5% under 1.0 sun. Furthermore, the integrated spruce wood/ZIF-8/PDA hybrids can remove organic pollutants after solar evaporation. Notably, the constructed multifunctional solar evaporator takes advantage of sustainable solar energy, low-cost biomass, and ZIF-8/PDA nanostructures to acquire desirable performance in water evaporation and sewage purification. Refereed/Peer-reviewed