ABSTRACT Porous photothermal hydrogels with high elasticity and mechanical strength are promising materials for solar‐driven interfacial evaporation. However, conventional porous hydrogels often suffer from weak mechanical properties due to their high porosity. Herein, we report a simple strategy for fabricating highly elastic and robust porous hydrogels with tunable pore structures. This is achieved by using an Fe 3+ ‐crosslinked poly(HEMA‐co‐AAc) skeleton to impart excellent mechanical strength and by using porogens of varying sizes to control pore dimensions. As a result, the obtained hydrogels achieve a compressive stress of up to 16.14 MPa at 90% strain, along with fatigue resistance and self‐recovery properties. After modification with tannic acid, the porous hydrogels exhibit a high light absorbance of 93.6%. Furthermore, they demonstrate outstanding photothermal performance and interfacial evaporation capability, reaching an evaporation rate of 1.58 kg m −2 h −1 under one‐sun irradiation. Outdoor experiments confirm that the hydrogel also maintains a high evaporation rate and effective water purification performance. This high‐strength porous hydrogel shows great potential for practical applications in solar‐driven interfacial evaporation.
Lin et al. (2026) studied this question.