Design of phase change materials with carbon aerogel composite for multi-responsive thermal energy capture and storage

Phase change materials (PCMs) have been widely used as thermal energy storage systems; however, traditional PCMs can only be triggered by temperature for thermal energy storage, which greatly limits their versatility in the application of capturing thermal energy. Herein, we propose a multi-responsive thermal energy capture and storage system involving Fe-doped carbon aerogel as a supporting matrix and eicosane as a PCM. With the ability to respond to light, electricity, and magnetism as well as temperature simultaneously, the designed PCM system demonstrates excellent performance for converting solar, electric and magnetic energy into thermal energy stored as latent heat in the materials. Furthermore, our multi-responsive PCM demonstrates a mild transition onset temperature of 35 °C, relatively large thermal energy storage density of 212 J g−1, shape stability without liquid phase leakage in transition, and excellent phase transition stability even after 1000 heating–cooling cycles. Our reported PCM may shed light on the development of complementary multi-energy utilization.