Recently, the increase in population and expansion of construction has caused a significant increase in energy consumption. This issue has caused many concerns about the depletion of energy sources and the increase in pollution caused by its use. For this reason, attention has been paid to new sustainable solutions to supply the energy needed by humans and also to prevent its waste in recent years. Thermal energy storage (TES) refers to the temporary storage of energy in the form of cooling or heating for later use, and is considered a technology in the field of using renewable energy, and can help create balance between energy demand and resources by storing excess energy and returning it when needed. Phase change materials (PCMs) can store thermal energy of the surrounding environment when they reach the phase change temperature (melting or freezing point), based on the latent heat of melting and freezing. The purpose of this article is to study phase change materials, how they work and their types. we try to find the weak and strong points of using these materials by reviewing the studies done in this field, and we can express the areas needed for future research. Different types of PCMs are Organic, Inorganic and Eutectic. methods of PCM incorporation are macro and micro encapsulation as direct ways of installing them in buildings or using them in combination with different heating and cooling systems. Although this material has shown reasonable success in the field of energy consumption reduction in most cases, however, other factors must be considered to determine the cost-effectiveness of using such a system. So Economic and life cycle analysis of phase change materials are of great importance in future studies.
