Hierarchical Nanostructures for Energy Applications

The rapidly growing energy crisis in the world has prompted scientists and industrialists to make intensive efforts for the development of new materials and technologies that are capable of fulfilling the high energy and power demands. To decrease the gap between energy supply and demand, extensive efforts are being made in the area of renewable energy resources. Due to the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources a buffer layer of energy storage is crucial to make the system sustainable. The recent developments in nanostructured materials have brought a revolution in almost all of the above fields of energy conversion or storage to make such systems ecologically benign.

Bringing renewable technologies to market has been a real challenge in the past decade. New materials were being developed for energy applications in order to make these technologies readily adaptable for commercial use. Sluggish progress in 1D and 2D nanomaterials and intrinsic benefits of hierarchical 3D nanostructures have attracted the global research interest. Although there are a number of reports on this topic, there is still a lot of room available in fundamental considerations, physics, synthesis routes and the application and testing of nanostructured materials.

This special issue will focus on recent developments in hierarchical nanostructures being explored for energy applications (Solar Cells, Fuel Cells, Batteries, Capacitors, water splitting etc). Original research articles and topical reviews are welcome on both synthesis and applications of hierarchical nanostructured materials (oxides, sulfides, selenides, carbides, etc.). The suggested theme includes application/exploration of hierarchical nanostructures and thin films in:

• Thermoelectric energy harvesting
• Solar photovoltaics
• Fuel cells
• Supercapacitors
• Photocatalysis
• Batteries
• Water Splitting