Nanomaterials for Advanced Energy Storage and Conversion

Dear Colleagues,

With the development of human society and economy, non-renewable resources such as coal, oil, and natural gas are running out, which together with the environmental degradation and ecological damage brought by the combustion of fossil fuels have caused serious problems to sustainable development. Therefore, developing clean and renewable energy becomes particularly important. People have made considerable efforts to alleviate their dependence on fossil fuels through the transformation and utilization of renewable energy sources such as solar energy, hydrogen energy, wind energy, and tidal energy. Furthermore, in order to meet different energy storage requirements, researchers have designed and commercialized various new kinds of advanced energy storage devices, such as lithium-ion batteries, metal–air batteries, zinc-ion batteries, and supercapacitors to replace traditional lead–acid batteries and nickel–metal hydride batteries. Their applications have expanded to diverse fields such as consumer electronics, transportation, and national security. Meanwhile, a range of clean-energy conversion technologies such as solar cells, fuel cells, and electrocatalysis have also boomed in recent years. In brief, when it comes to the above-mentioned energy storage and conversion technologies, the main obstacle is finding appropriate electrode materials, which are capable of providing high energy efficiency, superior kinetics performance, long cycling stability, and so on. However, traditional electrode materials generally show inferior properties due to their intrinsic low conductivity, sluggish kinetics, and large volume changes upon cycling, which greatly hinder their practical application. To address these issues, the most effective strategy is to design and tune the morphology and structure at nanoscale. By virtue of the modification and functionalization of nanomaterials, not only does active material utilization efficiency and reaction kinetics of electrodes increase, but the structural instabilities and surface inactivation can also be mitigated, which greatly improves the overall performance of energy storage and conversion devices.

Prof. Dr. Zhiming Liu
Prof. Dr. Yan He
Dr. Peng Wang
Dr. Xiaojun Wang
Prof. Dr. Huifang Li
Guest Editors

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