Bioinspired Energy Materials: A Comprehensive Review of Advances in Photovoltaics, Storage, and Catalysis for Sustainable Energy Technologies

Abstract

The pressing need for the global transition to sustainable energy requires efficient yet environmentally friendly advanced materials. Bioinspired energy materials, which replicate nature's optimized systems, have great potential to create a platform for solar energy harvesting breakthroughs, energy storage, and catalytic conversion. This review offers a synthesis of the latest developments in biomimetic photovoltaics, battery technologies, and catalytic systems, including their benefits, limitations, and prospects for commercialization. Moth-eye-inspired nanostructures in solar cells have realized 20%–40% enhancements in light absorption over planar surfaces. Bioinspired battery electrodes, with hierarchical porous architectures imitated from wood and coral structures, demonstrate up to 30% enhancement in ion transport and cycle life. Enzyme-mimetic catalysts, especially Ni–Fe hydrogenase analogues, provide hydrogen evolution efficiencies of more than 85%, on par with platinum-based systems but at below 10% of the cost. This review also covers frontier topics like biomimetic thermoelectrics and triboelectric nanogenerators, which have shown up to 30% increased energy conversion efficiency based on nature-mimicking nanostructuring. The uniqueness of this research is that it performs integrative analysis across various energy platforms based on comparative performance, lifecycle assessment, and technological readiness levels. It points to major research lacunas in scaling, stability, and material integration, and suggests routes to fill the laboratory discoveries–industry implementation gap. The originality of this review is in its cross-domain integration, comparative data synthesis, and sustainability-focused analysis of bioinspired energy materials. This review intends to be a go-to resource for understanding sustainable energy technology evolution through bioinspiration.