New energy storage devices for post lithium-ion batteries

We face serious problems of the balance between industrial development and environment protection, due to the quickly increasing demands for energy resources. Current main energy resources are still from fossil fuels, resulting in CO₂ emission and environment pollution. Rechargeable batteries, which can be charged by renewable energy resources such as solar cells and wind power stations and provide clean energy by discharging, have attracted much attention as one of the main key technologies to solve these serious problems. However, the performance of present batteries is still too poor to support these industrial applications in electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and smart grid community systems connected with solar cells and wind power stations. To satisfy these industrial needs, developing high energy density and low cost rechargeable batteries is required. For developing high energy density batteries, lithium–oxygen/air batteries have become one of the most attractive topics because they have the largest theoretical energy density. For developing low cost rechargeable batteries, sodium ion batteries are another quickly emerging topic based on our rich sodium resources. Besides these two types, magnesium ion and organic electrode batteries have also attracted much more attention. They will become the main directions of post lithium-ion batteries.

In this themed issue, recent research progress in non-aqueous lithium–oxygen/air, all solid state lithium–air, sodium–oxygen/air, sodium-ion, magnesium-ion, lithium metal anode and organic electrode batteries is reviewed and commented on with possible development directions as post lithium ion batteries. Moreover, some research articles presenting new findings and interesting results in this field are also included. I hope that this themed issue will provide our broad readers the latest research status and development direction for postlithium-ion batteries, and stimulate great interest in innovative post lithium-ion batteries for a sustainable low carbon society.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to all of the authors for submitting their high quality manuscripts, and to the referees for their careful reviewing. I would also like to thank my co-guest editors Prof. Peter G. Bruce at the University of St. Andrews and Prof. Yang Shao-Horn at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dr Heather Montgomery, Dr Tanya Smekal, Dr Philip Earis and their colleagues at the RSC office for publication of this themed issue “Post-lithium Ion Batteries” in Energy & Environmental Science.

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