Rochester team builds zero-waste solar desalination panel
A University of Rochester team has built a solar-powered desalination panel that produces fresh water without brine waste. Black metal etched with a femtosecond laser pulls a thin film of seawater across, distills it with sunlight, and pushes salts to the edges. The findings were
Lead researcher Chunlei Guo at Rochester's Institute of Optics describes a femtosecond-laser-etched black metal panel that absorbs nearly all incoming sunlight, pulls a thin film of seawater across an active zone, distills the fresh water out, and drives leftover salts and minerals into a passive outer zone where they crystallize as solids. No chemical pretreatment is required. The team also showed the panel can be fitted with hydrogen titanate nanoparticles to harvest lithium from seawater. Published in Light: Science and Applications, May 27, 2026.