Advanced Electrochemical Materials for Next-Generation High-Performance Batteries

Dear Colleagues,

As global electrification drives battery demand toward the terawatt-hour scale, developing next-generation batteries that harmonize high energy and power with lifetime, safety, and manufacturability has become a strategic imperative. This Special Issue, entitled "Advanced Electrochemical Materials for Next-Generation High-Performance Batteries," provides a comprehensive forum for the full spectrum of research required to transcend current performance limits. We welcome contributions ranging from fundamental mechanistic studies and novel material discovery to system-level technological innovations and engineering realizations. By aligning advanced electrochemical materials with enabling technologies and leveraging physics-informed modelling and operando diagnostics, this Special Issue will accelerate the translation from proof-of-concept advances to scalable, practically viable high-performance batteries. We encourage original research and strategic reviews that address critical bottlenecks in both established and emerging battery systems, fostering holistic dialogue among researchers in materials science, electrochemistry, and manufacturing to define the future of high-performance energy storage across diverse applications.

Rechargeable batteries are a key hardware foundation for today’s intelligent electrification. They provide essential power for smart consumer electronics, drones, and robots. At larger scales, they underpin electric vehicles and stationary energy-storage systems, supporting low-carbon transport and grid stability. As these applications expand, global lithium-ion battery demand is projected to exceed 1.6 TWh by 2026, and batteries are expected to deliver higher energy and power in smaller and lighter packages while maintaining long life, safety, and cost-effective manufacturing.

In this context, “high-performance” batteries are those that can meet these simultaneously demanding targets—high energy and high power in compact, lightweight formats—while sustaining long cycle life, robust safety, and manufacturing viability at scale. Such balanced performance is not a single metric improvement, but a system-level capability that determines whether battery technologies can reliably transition from laboratory advances to real-world devices and large-scale deployment.

Despite rapid progress, achieving this high-performance balance is still constrained by fundamental materials limitations and engineering realization challenges. Performance and degradation are often governed via interfacial chemistry and coupled transport–reaction processes; under practical conditions (high voltage, high loading, fast charging, and wide temperature windows), stability, kinetics, and failure pathways are tightly interdependent. Overcoming these bottlenecks requires coordinated advances in electrode and electrolyte materials, interphase regulation, and quantitative electrochemical diagnostics, supported by advanced characterization and physics-based modelling to establish actionable design rules.

Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new materials and promising approaches for next-generation high-performance batteries, especially those that can deliver balanced improvements in energy and power, lifetime, safety, and manufacturability under practical conditions. In this Special Issue, we will provide an overview of recent advances in advanced electrochemical materials and enabling technologies for next generation batteries. We welcome research papers involving theoretical, methodological, and empirical studies, as well as review papers that provide a critical overview of the state of the art of technologies. Manuscripts from cross disciplinary fields are strongly encouraged, such as battery electrochemistry, interfacial science, advanced characterization, modelling and simulation, and data-driven or AI-enabled approaches, which can provide timely and effective solutions for emerging challenges in high-performance battery systems.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following:

• Lithium-ion batteries;
• Advanced cathode materials;
• Advanced anode materials;
• Solid-state and gel electrolytes;
• Low temperature and/or high temperature electrolytes;
• Other battery chemistries (Na, Zn, Mg, etc.);
• Advanced electrochemical modelling and simulation;
• Advanced materials characterization (including operando/in situ);
• Artificial intelligence applications for batteries;
• Advanced battery manufacturing.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Tao Huang
Guest Editor

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