Emergence of Non‐photoresponsive Catalytic Techniques for Environmental Remediation and Energy Generation

Catalysis plays an important role in all the major applications and challenges in the environment, including energy generation, environmental purification and wastewater remediation. Although photocatalysts are desirable in addressing energy and environmental issues, they have some major drawbacks, such as solar sensitivity, low efficiency, and easy charge recombination, which limit their applications. Hence, it is imperative to design and explore new catalytic techniques that include nonphotoresponsive catalysts. In this review, the detailed possibilities, characteristics and prospects of non-photoresponsive catalysts, such as piezocatalysts, temperature-based catalysts such as thermocatalysts and pyrocatalysts, and tribocatalysts along with hybrid catalysts are described. The overall mechanism of each catalytic technique and its applications in different fields, such as energy generation, degradation of organic pollutants, wastewater remediation, ROS generation, and reduction of carbon dioxide, are discussed.