A review on the progress of nanostructure materials for energy harnessing and environmental remediation

The drastic increment in global population has led to a large increase in energy and water demand. In most cases, the classical energy resources, i.e., fossil fuel, are widely deployed; however, they are prone to release large amount of greenhouse gases as their end product. Being a classical route of combustion, it is impossible to avoid these unwanted gaseous products but prolong release of these gases on the Earth’s atmosphere leads to long term effects like global warming and climate change [ 1 , 2 ]. Moreover, the non-replenishable nature, limited availability, and environmental deterioration caused by processing these fossil fuels urged to search new source of sustainable energy. The natural resources like solar, wind, hydrothermal, and geothermal are some of the well known as they are replenishable and emission free. Among them, solar energy is most preferred, because, besides generating electricity, it can also benefit in water and wastewater treatment, hydrogen production, and driving artificial photosynthesis [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ].