Original: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clema.2025.100363
Without a thorough review of the existing research on carbon-based nanomaterials (CBNs) across different engineering fields, the discipline risks becoming too narrowly focused on specific applications or conditions. This limits our ability to make full use of the multifunctional and cross-disciplinary advantages that CBNs can offer.
Carbon-based nanocomposites are a key way to apply CBNs more broadly. Their performance can be customized through methods such as surface modification, doping, interface engineering, and designing structures across multiple scales. This review provides an organized summary of current design strategies for nanocomposites that use carbon dots (CDs), carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and graphene-based nanomaterials (GBNs). It highlights real examples showing their strong potential in five fast-growing engineering fields: electronic devices, energy storage systems, civil engineering, water treatment, and biomedical engineering.
This review also offers a broad overview of recent progress in CBN research, focusing on major applications, persistent challenges, and new opportunities in different disciplines. Collaboration across fields is expected to play an increasingly important role, especially in areas like energy storage, structural health monitoring, and biosensing.
Looking ahead, future developments are likely to emphasize advanced material design, sustainable and scalable manufacturing methods, intelligent optimization using artificial intelligence, deeper interdisciplinary cooperation, and more rigorous testing. These steps are essential to overcoming current barriers related to material synthesis, performance, commercialization, and practical integration.
Overall, these insights highlight the crucial role of carbon-based nanomaterials in enabling multifunctional, widely applicable solutions for next-generation engineering systems.