This review covers the sustainable development of advanced improvements in CO ₂ capture and utilization.

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture using solid sorbents has been recognized as a very promising technology that has attracted intense attention from both academic and industrial fields in the last decade.

This review summarizes pathways to obtain LDH nanosheets for various applications, provides an overview of the current understanding of mechanistic studies, and promotes a better understanding of the fundamental chemistry, which will in turn be beneficial for the wider scientific community, and will present potential future directions of the research areas.

Electrochemical CO₂ reduction to value‐added chemicals/fuels provides a promising way to mitigate CO₂ emission and alleviate energy shortage. CO₂‐to‐CO conversion involves only two‐electron/proton transfer and thus is kinetically fast. Among the various developed CO₂‐to‐CO reduction electrocatalysts, transition metal/N‐doped carbon (M‐N‐C) catalysts are attractive due to their low cost and high activity. In this work, recent progress on the development of M‐N‐C catalysts for electrochemical CO₂‐to‐CO conversion is reviewed in detail. The regulation of the active sites in M‐N‐C catalysts and their related adjustable electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction performance is discussed. A visual performance comparison of M‐N‐C catalysts for CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR) reported over the recent years is given, which suggests that Ni and Fe‐N‐C catalysts are the most promising candidates for large‐scale reduction of CO₂ to produce CO. Finally, outlooks and challenges are proposed for future research of CO₂‐to‐CO conversion.

Recently, there has been rapid growth in research related to the synthesis and application of flame retardant polymer–layered double hydroxide (LDH) nanocomposites. In order to outline the potential and to promote further developments in the field we have prepared a critical review of the most recent progress in the area. We discuss the techniques and indices (e.g. micro calorimetery, limiting oxygen index, cone calorimetry and UL-94) for evaluating the flame retardant properties. The flame retardant mechanism of LDHs, the types of polymers studied, the effect of LDH chemical composition and the synergistic effect with other fire retardants are reviewed. It is hoped that this review will not only introduce the synthesis, characterisation and application of polymer–LDH nanocomposites for flame retardancy, but also prompt new discussion on the use of LDH dispersions in polymer-based materials.