Emerging Solid-to-Solid Phase-Change Materials for Thermal-Energy Harvesting, Storage, and Utilization

Phase-change materials (PCMs) offer tremendous potential to store thermal energy during reversible phase transitions for state-of-the-art applications. The practicality of these materials is adversely restricted by volume expansion, phase segregation, and leakage problems associated with conventional solid-liquid PCMs. Solid-solid PCMs, as promising alternatives to solid-liquid PCMs, are gaining much attention toward practical thermal-energy storage (TES) owing to their inimitable advantages such as solid-state processing, negligible volume change during phase transition, no contamination, and long cyclic life. Herein, the aim is to provide a holistic analysis of solid-solid PCMs suitable for thermal-energy harvesting, storage, and utilization. The developing strategies of solid-solid PCMs are presented and then the structure-property relationship is discussed, followed by potential applications. Finally, an outlook discussion with momentous challenges and future directions is presented. Hopefully, this review will provide a guideline to the scientific community to develop high-performance solid-solid PCMs for advanced TES applications.