Amalagha Nengimote Godwin1,2✉, Olaseinde Kehinde Oluwafemi3, Chukwudi Emmanuela Chidimma4, Moses Adondua Abah5 and Micheal Abimbola Oladosu5
1Business, Management, Accounting and Finance/ Chester Business School, University of Chester, Parkgate Road, Chester CH1 4BJ, United Kingdom
5Department of Marine Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Niger Delta University, Bayelsa State, Nigeria.
3Department of Physics, Faculty of Physical Science, Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria
4Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering Technology, Federal Polytechnic Nekede, Owerri, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria
5ResearchHub Nexus Institute, Nigeria
Received: June 2, 2026/ Revised: Aug 1, 2026/Accepted: Aug 3, 2026
(✉) Corresponding Author: Nengimoteamalagha78@gmail.com
Highlights
- Sustainable, earth-abundant materials are driving the development of next-generation clean energy harvesting technologies.
- Lead-free perovskites, triboelectric nanogenerators, and bio-based piezoelectric materials offer promising alternatives for decentralized power generation.
- Advanced energy storage systems, including sodium-ion batteries and pseudocapacitors, enhance the efficiency of self-powered devices.
- Challenges such as material variability, mechanical durability, and manufacturing costs remain key barriers to large-scale commercialization.
- Machine learning is expected to accelerate sustainable materials discovery and optimize the integration of next-generation energy harvesting and storage systems.
Abstract
Amidst the global energy crunch, the widespread prevalence of major climatic disruption and extreme weather requires a wholesale systemic disruption of incumbent fossil fuel infrastructure. As the world seeks to effectively decouple economic development from its concomitant carbon emissions footprint, a growing concern within modern materials science is the replacement of depleted high-toxicity elements with earth-abundant, circular alternatives. As a result, modern sustainable materials design is now acknowledged as the most critical bottleneck for efficiency levels in decentralized clean power architectures. This field now sees various new energy harvesting approaches, including lead-free perovskite photovoltaics, triboelectric nanogenerators and flexible bio-based piezoelectric matrices that harness local energy sources through clean mechanisms. The chaotic electrical signals provided from these mechanisms can be reliably stored with modern high energy capacity batteries such as sodium-ion cells and rapidly charging pseudocapacitors. While these systems show immense potential for cleaner energy harvesting, mass adoption is currently stymied by problems associated with biomass inconsistencies, poor high-strain stability and the high cost of starting manufacture. The viability of these new energy approaches hinges entirely upon the future integration of machine-learning algorithms that promote novel low-toxicity materials and combined self-powered units. It is our intention to map the route for all relevant research efforts, from the laboratory stage to sustainable industrial power generation, through the information presented herein.
Keywords: Sustainable materials; Energy harvesting; Electrochemical energy storage; Green electronics; Self-powered systems; Circular materials design
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How to cite this article
Amalagha, N. G., Oluwafemi, O. K., Chidinma, C. E., Abah, M. A., & Oladosu, M. A. (2026). Sustainable materials for energy harvesting and storage: A review of emerging trends and technologies. Science Archives, 7(3), 284–298. https://doi.org/10.47587/SA.2026.7301
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