Emerging trends in the application of carbon-based materials: A review

Climate change, environmental pollution, and the need for cleaner alternative energy sources have opened several areas of research interest. Carbon-based materials (CBMs), in all their versatility, have shown the potentials to be applied in these areas and more, and so far, the results are promising. CBMs possess excellent mechanical, electrical, thermal, optical, and chemical properties, which have prompted significant research interest in various fields of application. However, as their uses increase by the day, there is a need to track their destiny in the environment and update their negative impacts on cellular compartments and biological systems. This process will develop some guidelines for producing and using CBMs or their end-used products to reduce these negative impacts worldwide. This review article provides some major historical evolution of various CBMs and their emerging applications in water purification, clean energy conversion and storage, and biomedical engineering. It also describes the fate of CBMs in the environment and their toxicity to humans and other living organisms. Finally, the future trends in research and the challenges in developing CBMs have been highlighted.