Welcome to the Newest Member of the KeAi Family - Materials Science for Energy Technologies

Here we ask the Editor-in-Chief of Materials Science for Energy Technologies, Tejraj M. Aminabhavi, to tell us more about the field and why he believes the launch of this new exciting journal was critical.

Editorially speaking...

Why materials and materials science for developing energy technologies? If one imagines how remarkably does the size and extension of the World population affect the requirement and development of materials science and novel materials to meet the challenges of our energy needs? Addressing these questions is quite challenging and requires efforts from various scientific disciplines. Whatever may be the extent of energy-population connection, the concern that increasing the size of energy utilization scares the sustainability of the underlying natural energy resources? As per the reports of the United Nations, it is estimated that the World population will increase by around 10 billion by 2050; rapid growth expansion demands that majority of the population would like to stay in large cities. Such a huge population demands innovative and highly creative technologies in the areas of energy and energy related technologies in order to fulfill the needs of all human activities.

Rapid depletion of fossil fuels by the emission of climate changing green-house dangerous gases and growing environmental concerns are the key issues to make energy as one of the greatest challenges facing the World in the 21st century. As energy demands continue to surge worldwide, the need for most efficient and environmentally benign advanced energy materials and relevant technologies will become increasingly important. Finding innovative materials and alternative technologies to harvest and store energy (e.g., battery technology), and energy conversion (e.g., solar energy system) are critical to the future clean energy supply through controlling the properties of high-efficient materials and functional devices.

Therefore, it is realized that advanced materials play a key role in enabling technologies that can offer promising solutions to achieve renewable and sustainable energy pathways for the future; they also play a major role in protecting the environment from harmful carbon emissions such as methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and other toxic gases for burning carbon fossil fuels. Hence, the development of inexpensive and highly efficient environmentally benign energy technologies are the most important keys to the transmutation technology advances, including a wide range of potential applications in energy storage (e.g., lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells), solar energy (photo-voltaic), energy efficiency (motors, waste heat recovery), energy conversion (solar, cells, fuel cells, OLEDs), electric/hybrid vehicle systems (lithium-ion batteries, electric motors), portable electronics, electric vehicles, energy storage grids, nanoelectronics, etc.), and environmental remediation technologies (e.g., photocatalysis, hydrogen production, CO2reduction, membrane separations) to completely purify our environmental pollution (toxic gases-NOx, SOx; and contaminated water), and electrochemical sensors (chemical, gas and biological).

Thus, there is an increasing global demand for energy supply; energy storage is crucial for multifunctional and large scale practical applications in modern portable electronic devices, transportation through electric vehicles, large scale energy storage grids to integrate solar or wind energy into electricity; using the next generation and advanced state-of-the art nano-electrode materials having outstanding multifunctional electrochemical characteristics such as specific capacitance, energy density, power density, faster charge/discharge rates, longer cycle stability, and high efficiency. Such advanced and environmental friendly energy technologies are alternative sources of highly efficient, cost-effective and sustainable-energy systems that can satisfy the requirements of environmental issues and comfortable modern life of the people. Developing such green and high-efficiency renewable energy technologies are largely dependent on the design, synthesis, size, morphological structures and physico-chemical properties of the nano-scale materials.

Today, the research on climate change and energy related issues have become important worldwide. Materials Science for Energy Technologies covers the innovative fundamental and applied research aspects that provide effective solutions to the issues in the field of energy.

Tejraj M. Aminabhavi

Editor-in-Chief, Materials Science for Energy Technologies