Polydopamine-based functional materials and their applications in energy, environmental, and catalytic fields: State-of-the-art review

Recently, polydopamine (PDA) has emerged as a popular material due to its striking properties. As a novel bio-inspired material, PDA can be easily formed in environmental conditions on virtually all kinds of inorganic and organic substrates. The abundant functional groups on PDA allow it to be a versatile platform for further loading of other components with desired functionalities. Along with its excellent performance in various fields, research interest and attention about PDA have significantly increased in recent years. Considering increasing interest and advances in energy, environmental, and catalytic fields, we present this mini-review regarding the latest development of PDA-based functional materials in these fields. The properties of PDA-based functional materials are briefly introduced at the beginning. Emphases are put on the latest applications in areas of batteries, supercapacitors, electrocatalysis, photo- and chemo-catalysis, removal of heavy metals and organic dyes, oil/water separation as well as seawater desalination. At the end of this mini-review, we give a straightforward summary and prospect about PDA-based functional materials in these applications. We hope this mini-review could provide some useful information to guide the future development of PDA-based functional materials.