Recent Advances and Application Prospects in Photothermal Materials

Photothermal effect refers to the characteristics of materials that could generate heat under the irradiation of sun or laser light. It can not only maximize the efficiency of solar energy conversion, but also break through the spatiotemporal limitation of laser light transmission, which holds excellent potential and application prospect. Currently, researchers have developed many photothermal materials based on three main photothermal effect mechanisms, plasmonic heating, non-radiative relaxation in semiconductors and thermal vibration in molecules, which include metal nanomaterials, inorganic semiconductor materials, carbon materials, two-dimensional transition metal carbides and nitrides (MXenes), organic small molecules, polymer materials, metal organic framework (MOF), covalent organic framework (COF), organic co-crystals materials, etc. Among them, inorganic materials have the advantages of a wide range of sources, simple structure and excellent thermal stability, while organic materials can be easily designed in structure, and have better biocompatibility. Based on these attractive characteristics, the photothermal effects have been extensively investigated in the area of energy utilization, biomedicine, catalytic conversion, intelligent devices, etc., and realized the applications in photothermal solar evaporation, photothermal therapy, photothermal catalysis, photothermal functional materials. In addition to the rapid development of traditional applications, novel applications have also been explored, such as anti-icing coating, reversible adhesive, agriculture heaters, photothermal energy storage, photothermal induced self-healing materials, photothermal-driven soft robots, etc. However, there are still some challenges in the research of photothermal materials, such as narrow absorption range, low photothermal conversion efficiency, limited application development, and difficulty in use of the elevated temperature induced by photothermal effect. This review briefly summarizes the progresses in the development, utilization of photothermal materials. The challenges and the development direction of photothermal materials are also discussed. It is hope that this review could provide inspiration for the further research in terms of construction of new photothermal materials and innovation of their application.