The importance of nanostructured materials for energy storage/conversion

The finite nature of fossil fuels and concerns over the greenhouse effect make the effective utilization of energy and conservation key issues. Using environmentally friendlier materials to either produce or store energy becomes extremely important to overcome the disparity between the energy supply and demand. Nowadays, the replacement of conventional energy with renewable sources such as hydrogen storage, thermal storage, lithium batteries, and supercapacitors has received relentless interest. Nanomaterials garnered much interest because of their superior properties such as large surface area, favorable carrier properties, mechanical stability, and both high electrical and thermal conductivity resulting from their nanosized structures. Due to their structural diversity and excellent properties, nanostructured materials and their composites have been extensively studied for energy storage/conversion related applications including photocatalysts for water splitting, hydrogen storage materials, and thermal energy storage materials, as well as electrode materials for various lithium batteries and supercapacitors. This chapter summarizes the recent developments, limitations, and challenges of the nanostructured materials for energy storage/conversion applications. The limitations and challenges of using nanostructured materials to enhance the performance of the energy storage materials have also been addressed.