Guest Editors

Prof. Hailei Zhao

School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China

E-mail: hlzhao@ustb.edu.cn

Prof. Qipeng Lu

School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China

E-mail: qipeng@ustb.edu.cn

Prof. Wenbin Cao

School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China

E-mail: wbcao@ustb.edu.cn

Prof. Sanjay Mathur

Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Cologne, 50939 Cologne, Germany

E-mail: sanjay.mathur@uni-koeln.de

     With rapid consumption of fossil energy and increasingly environmental pollution, development of renewable energy conversion, utilization, storage technologies and materials have become the hot research areas nowadays. Generating electricity using renewable energy resources (such as solar, wind and geothermal) reduces greenhouse gas emissions and helps address climate change. However, the power output from renewable sources depends on variable natural factors, which makes these power supplies difficult to control, presenting challenges for national grid. Normally, they need auxiliary energy storage devices (rechargeable batteries, supercapacitors), and converters/inverters for further regulating the delivered power. Meanwhile, the renewable energy can be used directly to produce hydrogen or other fuels (e.g., ammonia, alcohol, ethylene). These chemicals can subsequently be operated in a fuel cell to generate electricity or used as intermediates for other industrial applications.

The development of energy conversion, utilization, storage and related material science has led to significant advances in understanding the device working principles, mechanisms and material structure-performance relationships, which inspire this Research Topic. This Special Issue will collect the papers reporting the current status and future trends of these emerging research topics. We cordially invite investigators to contribute original research articles, review articles, perspectives. Potential topics include, but not limited to: solar cells; photocatalysis; fuels (e.g., hydrogen, ammonia, alcohol) generation, storage and applications; supercapacitors; lithium (sodium) ion and metal air battery technologies.