Mechanisms, Materials and Devices for Emerging Solar Photovoltaic and Lithium Battery Technologies

Dear Colleagues,

Given the strong drive toward carbon neutrality and limiting climate change, electricity from solar photovoltaics and energy storage will play a vital role in the power generation sector. On one hand, solar photovoltaics is one of the major solutions towards minimizing the use of fossil fuels to solve pivotal energy and environmental issues. For this, it is necessary to ensure electricity generation from solar energy in a cheap but effective way, and it requires tremendous efforts to go beyond the traditional and existing technologies. There has been quite good progress in this direction with the development of a variety of emerging photovoltaic technologies in the last couple of decades. The fast progress in photovoltaic materials development and understanding of their fundamental properties have enabled the optimization of solar photovoltaic device architectures and performances. In order to further promote these photovoltaic characteristics and achieve industrial use of the emerging semiconductor materials, academic scholars and R&D teams need to put a focus on revealing mechanisms for performance improvement and degradation, designing new efficient architecture, enhancing device performance (including conversion efficiency and stability), as well as replacing expensive or highly toxic chemicals used in device fabrication. On the other hand, technologies associated with clean energy conversion combining energy storage are gaining worldwide attention. Lithium-ion battery is the basis of modern portable electronics and electric vehicles. Given the currently commercialized transition metal-oxide-type cathodes have shown limited energy density, improving the capacity of cathode materials as well as the energy density of battery systems are the major concerns.

To collect and find innovative solutions to the fundamental challenges, the present Special Issue entitled: “Mechanisms, Materials and Devices for Emerging Solar Photovoltaic and Lithium Battery Technologies”, provides a platform for researchers and practitioners in the field of photovoltaic and energy storage applications including but certainly not limited to organic solar cells, quantum dot solar cells, perovskite solar cells, dye-sensitized solar cells and their tandem architectures, as well as metal lithium battery and lithium-ion battery. Papers published in this Special Issue describe original works, forcing on theoretical calculations, surface modifications, cost-efficient methods and materials development. New conceptions of photovoltaic devices and material structure design are also the targets of this Special Issue.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Qian Zhao
Prof. Dr. Feng Liu
Dr. Abhijit Hazarika
Guest Editors

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• low toxicity
• high stability
• low cost
• high energy density
• high capacity
• conversion efficiency
• device structure
• performance mechanism
• deposition and fabrication techniques
• industrial production
• quantum dot solar cell
• perovskite solar cell
• polymer solar cell
• dye-sensitized solar cell
• metal lithium battery
• lithium-ion battery