Nanomaterials for Sustainable Energy

This book presents the unique mechanical, electrical, and optical properties of nanomaterials, which play an important role in the recent advances of energy-related applications. Different nanomaterials have been employed in energy saving, generation, harvest, conversion, storage, and transport processes very effectively and efficiently. Recent progress in the preparation, characterization and usage of 1D, 2D nanomaterials and hybrid architectures for energy-related applications and relevant technologies and devices, such as solar cells, thermoelectronics, piezoelectronics, solar water splitting, hydrogen production/storage, fuel cells, batteries, and supercapacitors are covered. Moreover, the book also highlights novel approaches in nanomaterials design and synthesis and evaluating materials sustainability issues. Contributions from active and leading experts regarding important aspects like the synthesis, assembly, and properties of nanomaterials for energy-related applications are compiled into a reference book. As evident from the diverse topics, the book will be very valuable to researchers working in the intersection of physics, chemistry, biology, materials science and engineering. It may set the standard and stimulates future developments in this rapidly emerging fertile frontier of nanomaterials for energy.

Quan Li, Ph.D., is Director of Organic Synthesis and Advanced Materials Laboratory at the Liquid Crystal Institute of Kent State University, where he is also Adjunct Professor in the Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program. He has directed research projects funded by US Air Force Research Laboratory, US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, US Army Research Office, US Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, US National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Ohio Third Frontier, Samsung Electronicsetc. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Shanghai, where he was promoted to the youngest Full Professor of Organic Chemistry and Medicinal Chemistry in February of 1998. He was a recipient of CAS One-Hundred Talents Award (BeiRenJiHua) in 1999. He was Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Germany. He has also won Kent State University Outstanding Research and Scholarship Award. Li has edited three Wiley books and three Springer books in the past five years, and is the invited author of the entry “Liquid Crystals” for Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia and “Gold Nanorods”for Encyclopedia of Surface and Colloid Science.