Editorial: Advanced micro/nano materials for electrochemical energy conversion and application

Editorial Advanced Catalysis and Nanostructure Design for Solar Energy Conversion

1 International Research Center for Renewable Energy, State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, China 2 Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 3 Centre for Clean Environment and Energy, Environmental Futures Centre, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD 4215, Aus...

Materials for Clean Energy Conversion

Metal-organic frameworks and their derived materials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion: Promises and challenges

In addition to their conventional uses, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have recently emerged as an interesting class of functional materials and precursors of inorganic materials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion technologies. This class of MOF-related materials can be broadly categorized into two groups: pristine MOF-based materials and MOF-derived functional materials. Althou...

2D and 3D photonic crystal materials for photocatalysis and electrochemical energy storage and conversion

This perspective reviews recent advances in inverse opal structures, how they have been developed, studied and applied as catalysts, catalyst support materials, as electrode materials for batteries, water splitting applications, solar-to-fuel conversion and electrochromics, and finally as photonic photocatalysts and photoelectrocatalysts. Throughout, we detail some of the salient optical charac...

Fuel cells for electrochemical energy conversion

A fuel cell is essentially a compact electrochemical “factory” that takes fuel as input and produces electricity as output (see fig. 1). Like a factory, a fuel cell will continue to churn out product (electricity) as long as raw material (fuel) is supplied. This is the key difference between a fuel cell and a battery. While both rely on electrochemistry to work their magic, a fuel cell is not c...