ABSTRACT Interfacial solar steam evaporation (ISSE) technology has attracted significant attention due to its remarkable potential for producing clean water using solar energy. Although substantial progress has been made in photothermal materials and evaporator design, a critical bottleneck persists in translating this technology from laboratory research to real‐world application: the pronounced disconnect between advanced material development and practical system engineering. Current research efforts remain predominantly focused on the “performance competition” of front‐end materials, while the corresponding design of efficient and reliable back‐end systems has not kept pace. To bridge this gap, this review adopts a back‐end engineering perspective to systematically evaluate the full‐chain development of ISSE technology, encompassing advanced material design, structural engineering, and evaporation efficiency enhancement strategies tailored to diverse application environments. We further summarized unified back‐end solution frameworks for characteristic scenarios for cross‐medium synergistic evaporation systems (CMSES). Ultimately, this review aims to clarify scientifically grounded and engineering‐relevant pathways for translating theoretical advances into practical deployment, thereby supporting the development of ISSE from laboratory studies toward real‐world applications.
Wang et al. (2026) studied this question.