Battery Technologies: Lithium & Beyond - a tribute to the late Peter Faguy

Special issue guest-edited by Prayag Biswal

Global efforts to mitigate climate change are causing a transition from non-renewable energy resources (fossil fuels) to renewable energy resources (wind, solar, hydroelectricity, geothermal). This energy transition to sustainably meet the world’s growing needs for electricity, heating, cooling, and power for transport is widely considered to be one of the biggest challenges facing humanity in this century. The transition is enabled by improvements in generation and storage technologies critical to harvesting inherently intermittent renewable energy. Moreover, growing needs for smaller, lighter, more powerful portable electronic devices and more powerful electric vehicles suitable for long-range transportation have further fostered the demand for dispatchable and efficient electrical energy storage. These have catalyzed rapid development and commercialization of high-energy & light-weight rechargeable batteries, primarily based on lithium. However, lithium-enabled rechargeable batteries are plagued with challenges such as uncontrolled surface/interface (low safety), sluggish transport & reaction kinetics (slow charging), & relatively rare abundance of the metal (high cost). Moving beyond lithium necessitates the development of safe & fast-charging rechargeable batteries based on relatively abundant metals (i.e., Na, Zn, Al, Fe, etc.).

Therefore, this special issue aims to discuss & summarize the current and prospective development of rechargeable battery technologies (i.e., Li, Na, Zn, Al, etc.), promoting their future development. The special issue is guest-edited by Prayag Biswal, Albemarle Corporation, USA. It is planned for April 2023 and the article submission deadline is February 15. When submitting the article for this special issue, the Battery Technologies Special Issue should be selected in the Section field.