Abstract:

Rapid industrialization, urbanization, and increasing anthropogenic activities have significantly intensified environmental pollution, posing serious challenges to water quality, ecosystem sustainability, and human health. Conventional remediation technologies often suffer from limited efficiency, high operational costs, poor selectivity, and secondary pollution. Nitrogen-doped hybrid nanomaterials have recently emerged as an advanced class of multifunctional materials owing to their unique electronic structures, enhanced surface reactivity, high electrical conductivity, tunable physicochemical properties, and superior catalytic performance. Incorporation of nitrogen atoms into carbon-based and inorganic nanomaterials modifies their electronic structure, increases defect density, improves the availability of active sites, and enhances adsorption and catalytic efficiency. Furthermore, hybridization with metal nanoparticles, metal oxides, graphene, carbon nanotubes, biochar, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), quantum dots, and conducting polymers has greatly expanded their environmental applications. These multifunctional nanomaterials have demonstrated remarkable performance in environmental monitoring, water purification, wastewater treatment, photocatalysis, electrocatalysis, gas sensing, pollutant degradation, antimicrobial activity, and sustainable industrial processes. This review summarizes recent advances in synthesis methods, structural engineering, physicochemical properties, functionalization strategies, environmental applications, industrial technologies, current challenges, and future prospects of nitrogen-doped hybrid nanomaterials for sustainable environmental management.