Thermal energy storage offers enormous potential for a wide range of energy technologies. Phase-change materials offer state-of-the-art thermal storage due to high latent heat. However, spontaneous heat loss from thermally charged phase-change materials to cooler surroundings occurs due to the absence of a significant energy barrier for the liquid-solid transition. This prevents control over the thermal storage, and developing effective methods to address this problem has remained an elusive goal. Herein, we report a combination of photo-switching dopants and organic phase-change materials as a way to introduce an activation energy barrier for phase-change materials solidification and to conserve thermal energy in the materials, allowing them to be triggered optically to release their stored latent heat. This approach enables the retention of thermal energy (about 200 J g(-1)) in the materials for at least 10 h at temperatures lower than the original crystallization point, unlocking opportunities for portable thermal energy storage systems.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 146. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 May 2026.
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#350,505
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#5,071
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Altmetric has tracked 33,403,089 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 81,256 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 49.4. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 1,489 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its contemporaries.
