Dear Colleagues,

Thin film materials have attracted much attention in recent years, related to their applications in energy harvesting and storage. These materials have been produced by different methods, such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), sol-gel coating, spray pyrolysis, atomic layer deposition (ALD), chemical bath deposition (CBD), and electroplating. The material properties can be tuned by changing the processing methods and conditions. Among fabricated materials, the composition can also be changed to improve the microstructure, optical properties, and electrical behavior. Some materials are single-phased, while others are composites. Since single-phased materials have limited applications, multiphase and mixtures of materials were synthesized. Moreover, nanocomposite thin films have attracted much attention of scientific communities because of their unique properties. Novel coating methods, such as sol-gel coating and CBD methods, lead to the production of nanoscale materials, which have enhanced surface properties that are essential in energy harvesting and storage. Thin film materials have been investigated for the application of many conventional devices, such as solar cells, photo electro-electro-chemical cells, supercapacitors, thin film batteries, electron emission devices, and photo-catalysts. In addition, novel thin film-based devices can be designed and fabricated for energy harvesting and storage applications. This Special Issue serves as a forum presenting the recent research results of the above topics related to thin film materials. We are interested with the designing, synthesis, characterization, and fabrication of various devices using thin film materials. Theoretical studies, such as new theories that can be used to explain existing material/device phenomena and modeling of device functionalities, are also interested.

Prof. Dr. Ahalapitiya H Jayatissa
Guest Editor

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• semiconductors
• metal oxides
• solar-cells
• thin film batteries
• coating
• optical properties
• nanomaterials