Nanostructures and Nanomaterials for Advanced Catalysis and Energy Conversion Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Presently, green energy is a key parameter for measuring global progress. This is due to the reduction in the use of fossil fuels, increase in oil prices, and the growing effect of human activities on the Earth's ecological system and, more importantly, high energy demand. Crises are enabling a shift in market interest from conventional fossil fuels to environmentally friendly and sustainable energy resources. Today, utilization of renewable energy resources is considered a promising avenue to enable the economic and social development of society. Therefore, advances in sustainable and renewable energy conversion and storage technologies with low-cost and remarkable efficiency are regarded as more important than ever. From this perspective, the search for low-cost, efficient and eco-friendly catalyst materials for these key photo- and/or electrocatalytic reactions is a potential area of research for the development of sustainable energy resources.

Material science and electrochemistry are two of the major branches in modern science, which support each other in terms of consistent development. Advances in nanomaterial synthesis and its usage in photo- and/or electrocatalysis has attracted noteworthy attention from researchers around the world. In this context, tuning the physicochemical properties of the nanostructures and nanomaterial significantly increases the rate of reaction during photo and/or electrocatalysis. The unique properties of nanostructures and nanomaterials, such as electrical conductivity, porosity, topography, surface area to volume ratio and type/nature of catalytic active centers, directly affects the intermediate adsorption free energy, charge-transfer kinetics, and reaction kinetics of electrochemical reactions.

The topics in this Special Issue, entitled “Nanostructures and Nanomaterials for Advanced Catalysis and Energy Conversion Applications”, mainly comprise the design and development of the new nanoscale functional materials for advanced catalysis and next-generation energy conversion applications. The main purpose is to obtain an in-depth scientific understanding of the novel synthesis strategies and application of nanostructured materials with unique morphologies and inimitable properties for high-performance catalytic and various energy conversion reactions.

Original research and review articles for this Special Issue include but are not limited to the following potential topics:

• Photo- and/or electrocatalysis;
• Energy conversion reactions: oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR), nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR), CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂ RR₎, etc.;
• Photo- and/or electrochemical water splitting;
• Fuel cells: solid oxide fuel cells, phosphoric acid fuel cells, alkaline fuel cells, proton exchange membrane fuel cells, etc.;
• Advanced catalysts for lithium–sulfur batteries, Zn-CO₂ batteries, metal-air batteries, etc.

We gladly invite you to submit an article to this Special Issue, which offers a great opportunity to publish your latest findings in the relevant research directions. Full papers, communications, and/or review articles will be considered in this Special Issue. We look forward to receiving your submissions.

Dr. Ghulam Yasin
Dr. Shumaila Ibraheem
Dr. Tuan Anh Nguyen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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