Na-Ion Batteries

How can we efficiently store electricity in chemicals and release it in terms of users’ demands? Rechargeable battery technologies enable us to fulfill this requirement, among which lithium ion batteries have become common in all aspects of our lives. However, with the increasing growth and evolution of our society, no single battery type is competent in every single application, and there is always a strong demand to explore new options. Among these options are sodium ion batteries, which have a similar working principle to lithium ion batteries which undergo rapid development and are suitable for large-scale energy storage due to the abundant resources and even distribution. This special issue focuses on the current state of development of sodium ion batteries, with special emphasis on key elements that potentially promote their application. The issue aims to highlight: new principles to design high-performance cathode and anode materials, new insights into electrode/electrolyte interface, advances in liquid and solid electrolytes, the importance of combination of DFT simulation, pioneering attempts of advanced characterizations, and the latest progress of engineering attempts. 

Prof. Dr. Yong-Sheng Hu, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Yong-Sheng Hu is a full professor at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is working on advanced materials for long-life stationary batteries and their energy storage mechanism, particularly focusing on Na based batteries. He has published over 200 internationally refereed SCI publications including Nature Mater., Nature Energy, Joule, Nature Commun., Science Adv., Adv. Mater., etc. He was selected as a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers in the field of Materials Science from 2014 to 2018. He became the senior Editor of ACS Energy Letters from October of 2018. He also received several awards and honors, such as The National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, The 14th China Youth Science and Technology Award, Tajima Prize, Fellow of The Institute of Physics (UK), Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry, etc.

Prof. Dr. Teófilo Rojo, CIC EnergiGUNE Energy Cooperative Research Centre, Spain

Teófilo Rojo received his PhD from the University of the Basque Country in 1981. Since 1992 he has been Full Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Bilbao, Spain. In 2010 he was appointed Scientific Director of CIC energiGUNE focusing his research on the study of materials for lithium batteries and beyond, to improve power and energy density both by exploring new compounds, optimized microstructures and by studying the mechanisms that govern their performance. In 2016 he was appointed as a Member of the Working Party on Chemistry and Energy of EuCheMS.

Prof. Dr. Shinichi Komaba, Tokyo University of Science, Japan

Prof. Shinichi Komaba obtained his Ph.D. from Waseda University, Japan, and then joined Iwate University as a research associate. After studying as a post-doctoral researcher at Bordeaux-CNRS, France, he joined Tokyo University of Science in 2005 to work on developing electrodes, electrolytes, and binding materials for various types of rechargeable batteries. His research group carries out cutting-edge research in the field of rechargeable batteries and their electrochemical applications. With more than 270 publications to his credit, Prof. Komaba has won numerous international awards, including the title of "Highly Cited Researcher" in 2019 and 2020.

Prof. Kisuk Kang, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, South Korea

Kisuk Kang is a Professor of materials science and engineering at Seoul National University (SNU), where he received his B.Sc. He completed his Ph.D. and postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 2013, he has been a tenured professor at SNU. His research laboratory focuses on developing new materials for batteries and electrocatalysts using combined experiments and ab initio calculations. His published works in this field have been cited more than 22,000 times, and he was selected as Highly Cited Researchers in 2018 from Clarivate Analytics. He is now a director of Center for carborganic energy materials, and a director of Center of Samsung SDI-SNU rechargeable batteries.

April 30, 2021

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