Nitrogen-Doped Unusually Superwetting, Thermally Insulating, and Elastic Graphene Aerogel for Efficient Solar Steam Generation.

By removing the oxygen-containing functional groups, thermal treatment in inert gas has been widely reported to improve the hydrophobicity of carbon materials. However, this work reports a contrary phenomenon for the nitrogen-doped graphene aerogel (NGA). As the temperature of thermal treatment increases from 200 to 1000 °C, NGA becomes more and more hydrophilic and the superwetting property remains for weeks in air.