The ever‐increasing amount of batteries used in today's society has led to an increase in the demand of lithium in the last few decades. While mining resources of this element have been steadily exploited and are rapidly depleting, water resources constitute an interesting reservoir just out of reach of current technologies. Several techniques are being explored and novel materials engineered. While evaporation is very time‐consuming and has large footprints, ion sieves and supramolecular systems can be suitably tailored and even integrated into membrane and electrochemical techniques. This review gives a comprehensive overview of the available solutions to recover lithium from water resources both by passive and electrically enhanced techniques. Accordingly, this work aims to provide in a single document a rational comparison of outstanding strategies to remove lithium from aqueous sources. To this end, practical figures of merit of both main groups of techniques are provided. An absence of a common experimental protocol and the resulting variability of data and experimental methods are identified. The need for a shared methodology and a common agreement to report performance metrics are underlined.

The massive worldwide transition of the transport sector to electric vehicles has dramatically increased the demand for lithium. Lithium recovery by means of ion sieves or supramolecular chemistry has been extensively studied in recent years as a viable alternative approach to the most common extraction processes. Graphene oxide (GO) has also already been proven to be an excellent candidate for water treatment and other membrane related applications. Herein, a nanocomposite 12-crown-4-ether functionalized GO membrane for lithium recovery by means of pressure filtration is proposed. GO flakes were via carbodiimide esterification, then a polymeric binder was added to improve the mechanical properties. The membrane was then obtained and tested on a polymeric support in a dead-end pressure setup under nitrogen gas to speed up the lithium recovery. Morphological and physico-chemical characterizations were carried out using pristine GO and functionalized GO membranes for comparison with the nanocomposite. The lithium selectivity was proven by both the conductance and ICP mass measurements on different sets of feed and stripping solutions filtrated (LiCl/HCl and other chloride salts/HCl). The membrane proposed showed promising properties in low concentrated solutions (7 mg_Li/L) with an average lithium uptake of 5 mg_Li/g in under half an hour of filtration time.

Graphene oxide (GO) has shown great potential as a membrane material due to its unique properties, including high mechanical strength, excellent thermal stability, versatility, tunability, and outperforming molecular sieving capabilities. GO membranes can be used in a wide range of applications, such as water treatment, gas separation, and biological applications. However, the large-scale production of GO membranes currently relies on energy-intensive chemical methods that use hazardous chemicals, leading to safety and environmental concerns. Therefore, more sustainable and greener approaches to GO membrane production are needed. In this review, several strategies proposed so far are analyzed, including a discussion on the use of eco-friendly solvents, green reducing agents, and alternative fabrication techniques, both for the preparation of the GO powders and their assembly in membrane form. The characteristics of these approaches aiming to reduce the environmental impact of GO membrane production while maintaining the performance, functionality, and scalability of the membrane are evaluated. In this context, the purpose of this work is to shed light on green and sustainable routes for GO membranes’ production. Indeed, the development of green approaches for GO membrane production is crucial to ensure its sustainability and promote its widespread use in various industrial application fields.

Copper oxide nanowires (NWs) are promising elements for the realization of a wide range of devices for low-power electronics, gas sensors, and energy storage applications, due to their high aspect ratio, low environmental impact, and cost-effective manufacturing. Here, we report on the electrical and thermal properties of copper oxide NWs synthetized through thermal growth directly on copper foil. Structural characterization revealed that the growth process resulted in the formation of vertically aligned NWs on the Cu growth substrate, while the investigation of chemical composition revealed that the NWs were composed of CuO rather than Cu₂O. The electrical characterization of single-NW-based devices, in which single NWs were contacted by Cu electrodes, revealed that the NWs were characterized by a conductivity of 7.6 × 10⁻² S∙cm⁻¹. The effect of the metal–insulator interface at the NW–electrode contact was analyzed by comparing characterizations in two-terminal and four-terminal configurations. The effective thermal conductivity of single CuO NWs placed on a substrate was measured using Scanning Thermal Microscopy (SThM), providing a value of 2.6 W∙m⁻¹∙K⁻¹, and using a simple Finite Difference model, an estimate for the thermal conductivity of the nanowire itself was obtained as 3.1 W∙m⁻¹∙K⁻¹. By shedding new light on the electrical and thermal properties of single CuO NWs, these results can be exploited for the rational design of a wide range of optoelectronic devices based on NWs.

Titanium dioxide nanotubes (TiO₂ NTs) have been widely investigated in the past 20 years due to a variety of possible applications of this material. Indeed, their high surface area and tunable morphology can easily implement key features of TiO₂, such as its biocompatibility and photo‐ and electrocatalytic properties. This combination makes TiO₂ NTs perfect candidates for multifunctional applications ranging from biomedical application to sensing and energy devices. Herein, we present TiO₂ NTs grown by anodic oxidation on top of a titanium foil in an ethylene glycol‐based electrolyte with NH₄F. The as‐grown amorphous nanotubes were then subjected to annealing in a reducing atmosphere at different temperatures while maintaining their amorphicity. The morphological, physicochemical, and electronic properties were then thoroughly evaluated to assess their use in different fields, from energy storage devices to photo‐catalytical applications.

Microsupercapacitors (µSCs) have received a lot of interest for their possible use in miniaturized electronics and in the field of the Internet of Things (IoT) to power distributed sensors. µSCs fill the gap between batteries and traditional capacitors, providing high power densities and acceptable energy densities to fulfill onboard power supply requirements, coupled with quick charge/discharge rates and extended lifetime. Charge balancing of µSCs is not a standard practice, although the optimization of electrodes can provide beneficial effects on the electrochemical performance and stability of the device. In this work, a charge‐balanced double‐layer µSC based on laser‐induced graphene (LIG) with [PYR14][TFSI] as an ionic liquid electrolyte is presented for the first time. The optimized device shows an improvement in terms of the increased lifetime of a factor of four and its energy efficiency is raised above 80%.