Interfacial solar steam generation (SSG) as a green desalination technique offers significant potential to obtain freshwater. For the first time, the performance of alkaline earth metals doped VO2 nanoparticles (VO2@alkaline earth metals) as highly efficient photothermal materials coated on poplar wood as a sustainable substrate in SSG of seawater is investigated. Among the fabricated photoabsorbers, the wood coated with VO2 doped with Ba, W/ VO2-Ba, had the highest solar evaporation efficiency of 93.45% under 1 sun (1 sun = 1 kW m− 2). For this photoabsorber, the concentration of Na+ of seawater (3138.19 ppm) reduced to 2.63 ppm after desalination. The ratio of preparation cost to evaporation flux was calculated as 1.16 USD kg− 1 m− 2 h− 1. The efficiency of W/VO2- Ba did not change significantly after 20 cycles.

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