Aviation needs a fuel that cannot yet be produced at scale. Direct CO₂ hydrogenation—engineered at the interface, within the reactor, and across operating boundaries rather than only at the active site—offers one of the shortest conditional pathways to producing full-composition, drop-in electro-sustainable aviation fuel. The central constraint is no longer only the Brønsted–Evans–Polanyi trade-off at an isolated site, but the architecture of a reaction network in which CO₂ activation, C–C coupling, aromatic formation, hydrogenation, and heat removal must operate cooperatively. Herein, we argue that interfacial reaction network engineering converts this constraint into a design rule: An oxide domain activates C–O bonds, a zeolite domain conducts C–C coupling and aromatization, and the two domains are coupled through controlled interfacial transfer of short-lived intermediates under a weak chemical-potential driving force. Recent kiloton-scale validation of this principle—demonstrating high CO₂ conversion, high C₈⁺ selectivity, low methane formation, and thousand-hour operation without oxidative regeneration—shows that the “impossible triangle” of catalytic activity, product selectivity, and long-term stability of the catalyst can be relaxed when catalyst nanostructure and fluidized-bed hydrodynamics are codesigned. The remaining challenge is contingent on techno-economic boundary conditions rather than conceptual: Whether cheap renewable electricity, inexpensive carbon feedstocks, million tonne–scale modules, and on-specification upgrading can converge fast enough to make full-composition CO₂-derived fuel competitive. We identify the operando descriptors, scale-dependent economics, and key engineering questions that must now be resolved.

Due to unique and excellent properties, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are expected to become the next-generation critical engineering mechanical and energy storage materials, which will play a key role as building blocks in aerospace, military equipment, communication sensing, and other cutting-edge fields. For practical application, the assembled macrostructures from individual CNTs are the common paradigms such as fibers or films. As the main representative, CNT films can not only retain the unique properties of their CNTs components, but also are more likely for mass-production than other macrostructures. Therefore, in this review, we focus on preparation of CNT films and discuss their emerging applications in the field of mechanical and electrochemical energy storage/conversion. Firstly, different preparation processes are systematically summarized. Then we introduce some typical strategies to improve their mechanical performances besides strengthening mechanism. Based on the progress of mass-production and performance optimization, we further discuss their potential utilization in mechanical and electrochemical energy storage/conversion devices. Finally, future perspectives for the development of CNT films in both production and application are proposed. We hope that this review will shed light on the preparation/assembly of CNT films and integrated application of excellent properties from individual to macroscopic dimensions. Moreover, the preparation and cross-scale application paradigms of CNT films also offer a good model for other macroscopic ordered assemblies of one-dimensional nanomaterials.