Journal of Materials Chemistry will publish a themed issue on Nanomaterials for Energy Conversion and Storage in 2012. Please contact the editorial office if you are interested in contributing an article. The Guest Editors for this issue are Professor Michael Graetzel (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausann) and Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne).
One of the main challenges facing mankind in the 21st Century is in the energy sector. Rapid increase in industrialization, urbanization and population growth has led to pronounced increase in the global energy demands. With depleting fossil fuels and growing concern on environmental protection, urgent research efforts are needed to find alternative energy resources that are efficient, economical and ecologically friendly. We need to find urgently new means of generating, store and transport power at TW scale. Since energy resources such as solar and wind are intermittent and power usage is increasingly on numerous portable electronic devices, efficient means have to be found for storage and transportation of energy. A number of electrical-electronic, photonic and optoelectronic devices have been proposed for this purpose. Typical systems under consideration include photovoltaic solar cells, batteries, supercapacitors, field-effect transistors, fuel cells, thermoelectric, thermal- and photo-catalysts and luminescence display devices.
Fortunately during late last century there has been a phenomenal increase in our understanding of systems at the atomic and molecular level. Advances permit now to tailor-make, characterize and manipulate materials at single molecule level and build devices putting pieces together at the molecular level (nanoengineering in a bottom-up approach). The topic of this special issue is how to use advances in material science and nanotechnology in designing systems for efficient inter-conversion of energy forms between thermal, solar (photonics) and electrical energy. Graphenes, Carbon nanotubes and conducting polymers are typical examples where nanoscale design permits their efficient performance in a number of energy conversion and storage devices. All devices dealing with conversion of energy forms and storage will be considered for this issue. Hydrogen produced via photochemical decomposition of water is an attractive energy resource. Hence hydrogen production, its storage and burning in fuel cells to get electricity will be included as well.
The deadline for the receipt of manuscripts for this themed issue is 11th June 2012
Manuscripts can be submitted using the RSC’s on-line submissions service. Please clearly state that the manuscript is submitted in response to the call for papers for the themed issue on Nanomaterials for Energy Conversion and Storage.
