Better Materials and Architectures Towards Energy Storage

In response to fossil-fuel shortages and ecological deterioration, human being has been diligently seeking for clean and renewable energy sources, which has placed energy storage at the forefront of technological innovation.  Such endeavors will not only provide critical technologies for grid energy storage, in particular, grid-connected intermittent energy sources such as photovoltaics and wind turbines, but are also essential to the development of electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles and other applications.  Current electrical energy storage is primarily based on batteries and supercapacitors.  Developing novel materials and material architectures that can provide high energy and power densities is particularly essential.  In this talk, the design and synthesis of novel nanocomposites for advanced energy storage applications will be presented.  Towards high-performance electrodes for energy storage, the essential prerequisites are making electrodes with faster ion transport, excellent electron conductivity, and robust electrode structure.  This provides a general design platform towards high-performance electrodes for energy storage applications.