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Materials for the Renewable Technologies: Challenges, Opportunities and Recent Advances

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "D1: Advanced Energy Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 14 February 2025 | Viewed by 3577

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616, USA
Interests: silicon anode; NMC cathode; all-solid-state Li metal battery; scalable synthesis; lithium/sulfur battery; solid-state electrolyte
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The emerging need to produce and store electricity is a critical challenge for the 21st century. In addition to maintaining the balance in the electric grid and preventing any shortage, it is crucial to store energy at off-peak periods and release it when the load is high. Currently, electricity production primarily relies on the burning of fossil fuels. Because of the limited resources for fossil fuels and severe environmental damages associated with their usage, it is crucial to switch to renewable energies such as solar, geothermal, wind, biomass, etc. 

To enhance the performance, efficiency, and safety of renewable energy storage/conversion devices, it is important to develop a solid understanding of their underlying operation and failure mechanisms. Adjustment of materials properties for each application is vital, since in most cases the performance is limited by the intrinsic properties of the active materials. Despite the tremendous efforts to push the materials performance beyond their limits, there is still a huge gap between the industrial standards and the current academic research which needs to be filled. This motivated us to dedicate a Special Issue of Energies to collect the most recent advances in the field of materials development for renewable technologies. We invite all researchers to publish their original research, whether it is purely fundamental or application-oriented, in the forms of research papers, reviews, or short communications. The proposed topics are listed below.

  • Supercapacitors.
  • Photovoltaic Cells.
  • Fuel cells (including polymer electrolyte membrane, molten salt, solid oxide fuel cells etc.).
  • Lithium batteries (including Li-ion, Li-sulfur, Li-metal, Li-air, all-solid-state batteries etc.).
  • Beyond lithium batteries (including different chemistries such as Na, K, Mg, Al Batteries).
  • Redox flow batteries.
  • Renewable technologies recycling.

We kindly invite you to submit your relevant work in the field of “Materials for the Renewable Technologies: Challenges, Opportunities and Recent Advances” for consideration for publication.

Dr. Maziar Ashuri
Dr. Zhao Ding
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Li-Ion Batteries
  • Beyond Li-Ion Batteries (including Na-ion batteries, K-ion batteries, multivalent batteries, all-solid-state batteries etc.)
  • Supercapacitors (including electrochemical double-layer capacitors, pseudocapacitors, hybrid capacitors)
  • Fuel Cells (including polymer electrolyte membrane, direct methanol, alkaline, molten carbonate, phosphoric acid, solid oxide fuel cells etc.).
  • Solar Photovoltaic Cells (including crystalline silicon, perovskite, dye-sensitized, photoelectrochemical, organic, solid-state, hybrid solar cells etc.)
  • Redox Flow Batteries (including inorganic, organic, semi-solid, hybrid flow batteries etc.)
  • Renewable Technologies Recycling
 

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 3781 KiB  
Article
Anodized TiO2 Nanotubes Sensitized with Selenium Doped CdS Nanoparticles for Solar Water Splitting
by Julián Alfaro Chacón, Andrea Cerdán-Pasarán, Isaac Zarazúa, Lourdes Ramos-Galicia, J. A. Hernández-Magallanes, K. C. Sanal, Shadai Lugo Loredo and Juan Manuel Hernández-López
Energies 2024, 17(7), 1592; https://doi.org/10.3390/en17071592 - 26 Mar 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1485
Abstract
In this research, TiO2 nanotubes (NTs) were produced by electrochemical anodization of a Ti substrate where different NH4F wt.% in the electrolyte was added. NTs with diameter of 65–90 nm and 3.3–4.9 µm length were obtained and sensitized with binary [...] Read more.
In this research, TiO2 nanotubes (NTs) were produced by electrochemical anodization of a Ti substrate where different NH4F wt.% in the electrolyte was added. NTs with diameter of 65–90 nm and 3.3–4.9 µm length were obtained and sensitized with binary cadmium chalcogenides nanoparticles, CdS and CdSe, by successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction method (SILAR). Additionally, both anions S and Se were deposited onto Cd, labeled as CdSSe and CdSeS, to evaluate the effect of the deposition order of the anion from the precursor solution to form cadmium chalcogenides. The structural, optical, and electrochemical performance were analyzed through the SEM, XRD, XPS, UV-VIS, lineal voltammetry and chronoamperometry characterizations. The increase of NH4F wt.% from 1.5% to 4.5% produced a decrement of the diameter and length attributed to the fluoride ions concentration causing solubility of the NTs. XRD confirmed the TiO2 anatase and hexagonal CdS structures. From the EDS and XPS results, the presence of small amount of Se in the sensitized samples demonstrated the doping effect of Se instead of forming ternary semiconductor. With the sensitization of the TiO2 NTs with the nanoparticles, an improved hydrogen generation was observed (reaching 1.068 mL h−1 cm−2) in the sample with CdSSe. The improvement was associated to a synergetic effect in the light absorption and higher cadmium chalcogenide amount deposited when sulfur ions were deposited before selenium. Full article
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14 pages, 8660 KiB  
Article
A Study of Intermediate for Synthesis of Cs0.3WO3 with Near-Infrared Photothermal Response
by Yue Zhang and Ruixing Li
Energies 2022, 15(22), 8542; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15228542 - 15 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1363
Abstract
Nanoscale tungsten bronze can convert near-infrared light into thermal energy. For a chemical synthesis, intermediate products and processes are potentially positive or negative to an end product. In this study, (NH4)2SO4 was added into the hydrothermal system of [...] Read more.
Nanoscale tungsten bronze can convert near-infrared light into thermal energy. For a chemical synthesis, intermediate products and processes are potentially positive or negative to an end product. In this study, (NH4)2SO4 was added into the hydrothermal system of WO3, CsCl, CH3CH2CHO, and NH3·H2O to increase the Cs/W ratio in solution. An intermediate, Cs1.1W1.65O5.5, was isolated. Subsequently, it was confirmed via a kinetics experiment conducted for different times. The results of the NH3·H2O and NH4COOCH3 system indicate there are two influence factors that influence the formation of Cs1.1W1.65O5.5: the leaching out of W and imine reactions. A low leaching out rate induces a high Cs/W ratio and low-concentration W in solution, leading to the formation of Cs1.1W1.65O5.5. The imine reaction decreasing CH3CH2CHO restrains the reduction in Cs1.1W1.65O5.5. The increase in CH3CH2COO with the reduction reaction results in both the micron-size sticks and nano-size equiaxial particles in powder. Full article
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