This review describes an in-depth overview and knowledge on the variety of synthetic strategies for forming metal sulfides and their potential use to achieve effective hydrogen generation and beyond.

A detailed overview on interface design and control in polymer based composite dielectrics for energy storage applications.

Piezoelectric materials, with their unique ability for mechanical‐electrical energy conversion, have been widely applied in important fields such as sensing, energy harvesting, wastewater treatment, and catalysis. In recent years, advances in material synthesis and engineering have provided new opportunities for the development of bio‐piezoelectric materials with excellent biocompatibility and piezoelectric performance. Bio‐piezoelectric materials have attracted interdisciplinary research interest due to recent insights on the impact of piezoelectricity on biological systems and their versatile biomedical applications. This review therefore introduces the development of bio‐piezoelectric platforms from a broad perspective and highlights their design and engineering strategies. State‐of‐the‐art biomedical applications in both biosensing and disease treatment will be systematically outlined. The relationships between the properties, structure, and biomedical performance of the bio‐piezoelectric materials are examined to provide a deep understanding of the working mechanisms in a physiological environment. Finally, the development trends and challenges are discussed, with the aim to provide new insights for the design and construction of future bio‐piezoelectric materials.

Self-powered flexible electronics are of particular interest and important for next generation electronics due to their light weight, flexible and self-sustainable properties. Many self-powered sensors made from piezoelectric composite materials are either inflexible or possess low piezoelectricity. In this work, we demonstrate self-powered flexible and highly active pressure and shear sensors based on freeze casting ceramic–polymer structures. A lamellar lead zirconate titanate (PZT) structure is initially developed via freeze-casting and the piezoelectric composites are formed by impregnating a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix into the aligned pore channels. The structured PZT–PDMS composites exhibited a high effective longitudinal piezoelectric coefficient (d₃₃*) of 750 pC N⁻¹, which is higher than that of the monolithic ceramic due to the combination of bending and flexural effects. The use of freeze casting enables the manufacture of complex and arbitrary shaped 3D piezoelectric architectures, along with the unique advantages of low-cost and ease of fabrication. A 14 × 14 mm² PZT–PDMS pressure sensor was able to bend to a small radius of 8 mm and maintain a high d₃₃. Furthermore, the manufactured self-powered sensors are demonstrated in a range of applications, such as acceleration, strain and touch sensors that use the d₃₃, d₃₁ and d₁₅ coefficients to detect longitudinal, transverse and shear loads. This work expands on the potential applications of freeze casting and provides new opportunities for the manufacture of future electronic sensors.

A detailed overview of pyro-electric, piezo-electric, tribo-electric, flexo-electric thermo-electric and photovoltaic charge generation mechanisms which are used to control electro-chemical reactions.

The most recent developments and future perspectives of porous ferroelectric materials for energy technologies are systematically discussed and summarized.