Dear Colleagues,

The number of studies and patents dealing with traditional metal nanoparticles and non-conventional nanocatalysts is increasing tremendously in the fields of catalysis and energy.

Nano-catalysis is expected to be a fruitful area for Green Chemistry, and the increasing ability to design in the nano-state may offer expanding catalytic developments. Nanotechnologies can help to redraw old industrial processes under a “greener” approach, re-evaluating, at a small scale, the synthesis of fine chemicals or drugs for the pharmaceutical industry. By finely tuning the scalability of the process, waste minimization and the saving of energy could be important goals easily reached by modern industry.

However, to provide the maximum benefit for society and the environment, nanocatalyst recycling is mandatory and it still represents an open challenge for chemists. To this end, supported catalysts, in combination with eco-friendly solvents (viz. ionic liquids, supercritical fluids, fluorous phases, water, etc.), can represent a valid and green alternative to homogeneous catalysis in classic solvents.

The need for energy is increasing worldwide, while, at the same time, fossil resources are decreasing tremendously. Industrial economies, as well as emerging countries, need to produce, transport, store, and use energy with increased efficiency.

In recent years, there have been tremendous efforts focusing on the development of new and cost-effective electrochemical technologies and materials. Novel nanophases, electrodes, and electrolyte materials are extensively investigated, as well as electrode and device configurations, to improve energy production, storage, and conversion technologies, employing electrochemical methods. In particular, electrodeposition is well known for depositing metals and metallic alloys at the industrial level, with a wide range of applications, from large area surface treatments to most advanced electronic industries. The electrodeposition of materials represents a new challenge, not only from an academic point of view, but also from an economic one, as this method presents interesting characteristics for large areas, such as low cost, and generally low temperature and soft processing of materials. The great interest in nanometer-scale materials systems arises from the fact that their optical, electrical, magnetic, or mechanical properties are often very different from the same materials in the bulk phase, and, more importantly, they can be tuned by changing the physical dimensions of the material. The procedure can be extended to the deposition of metals with the aim of limiting the amount of precious metals in electrocatalysis.

This Special Issue of Molecules focuses on the use of nanocatalysts and nanotechnologies in a wide range of catalytic organic reactions, electro-catalysis, and energy applications.

Suitable topics include, just to cite a few:

• Traditional carbon-carbon or carbon-heteroatom bond forming reactions (e.g., Heck, Suzuki, Stille, Sonogashira, Ullmann, Glodberg, and so on);
• Synthetic approaches, based on the green chemistry principles: atom-economy, dematerialization, energy saving, raw material diversification, green solvents, etc.;
• Detoxification of PCBs, fixation and chemical valorization of CO₂, and so on;
• Nano-metal catalyzed processes and technologies for recycle/conversion of plastics, biomasses and wastes;
• Development, characterization, device technology and performance of nano-metals and non-conventional nanocatalysts in: fuel cells, batteries, supercapacitors,    electrocatalysis, etc.;
• Surfaces modified for Energy Devices

Truly multidisciplinary studies providing a bird’s-eye-view of nanocatalyst features, including its development/synthesis and its analytical chemical and morphological characterization, as well as applications and structure-performance level correlations, are strongly encouraged.

Dr. Nicola Cioffi
Dr. Antonio Monopoli
Prof. Dr. Massimo Innocenti
Guest Editors

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