Recent Progress in the Synthesis of Nanocarbon and Derived Materials for High-Performance Batteries

Dear Colleagues,

The growing demands of energy and limited fossil fuel have accelerated the necessity to develop reliable energy storage technologies for the utilization of intermittent renewable energies, such as solar and wind energies. Batteries, especially lithium-ion batteries, have played an increasingly important role in our modern life since their successful launch in the market. However, the growing demand for electric vehicles and stationary energy storage systems requires batteries with a higher energy density, lower cost, longer cycle life and better safety than those that the current Li-ion batteries can offer. Thus, exhaustive efforts have been devoted to exploring new battery systems recently. On the path to developing advanced electrodes for new electrochemistry systems, nanocarbon and its derived materials have opened up frontiers in materials science and engineering issues. Carbon nanomaterials, mainly including carbon nanotubes/nanofibers, graphene, fullerenes and nanoparticles/quantum dots, have been intensively investigated for batteries over recent decades. The numerous varieties of nanocarbon make it capable of storing energy or serving as a host or conductive additive in battery electrodes.

The aim of this Special Issue is to tackle the following topics in nanocarbon-based energy storage systems: (i) sustainable and smart engineering of nanocarbon materials; (ii) the correlation among the nanostructure of carbon, charge storage mechanisms and the electrochemical performance; (iii) the working mechanisms of nanocarbon and its derived materials as anodes in emerging battery systems such as Na-ion batteries, K-ion batteries and multivalent-ion batteries; (iv) key parameters determining the properties of nanocarbon as a host or additive in new battery systems. To promote the comprehensive research progress on the application of nanocarbon to improve battery performance, we thereby invite authors to contribute original research and review papers covering the above topics and beyond.

Dr. Zhenglong Xu
Guest Editor

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• nanocarbon
• rechargeable batteries
• carbon-derived materials
• energy storage and conversion
• electrochemistry