Photo-thermal effect with photonic crystals for photocatalysis and water desalination

The demand of water is absolutely important for irrigation, industrial processes and domestic use. An interesting strategy to cope with the increasing water need is water desalination, which can be pursued with several strategies. Usually, the energy requirement of desalination plants is rather high. Membrane distillation is a good alternative, but it requires a non negligible amount of energy to heat the input water. Photothermal effects that exploit photonic structures can overcome this problem. In this review, we report significant works that employ photonic devices for water desalination. Moreover, we envisage the use of low-cost and easy-to-design one-dimensional photonic crystals and random photonic structures as photothermal devices.