Nanostructured electrodes for lithium-ion and lithium-air batteries: the latest developments, challenges, and perspectives

The urgency for clean and secure energy has stimulated a global resurgence in searching for advanced electrical energy storage systems. For now and the foreseeable future, batteries remain the most promising electrical energy storage systems for many applications, from portable electronics to emerging technologies such as electric vehicles and smart grids, by potentially offering significantly improved performance, energy efficiencies, reliability, and energy security while also permitting a drastic reduction in fuel consumption and emissions. The energy and power storage characteristics of batteries critically impact the commercial viability of these emerging technologies. For example, the realization of electric vehicles hinges on the availability of batteries with significantly improved energy and power density, durability, and reduced cost. Further, the design, performance, portability, and innovation of many portable electronics are limited severely by the size, power, and cycle life of the existing batteries. Creation of nanostructured electrode materials represents one of the most attractive strategies to dramatically enhance battery performance, including capacity, rate capability, cycling life, and safety. This review aims at providing the reader with an understanding of the critical scientific challenges facing the development of advanced batteries, various unique attributes of nanostructures or nano-architectures applicable to lithium-ion and lithium-air batteries, the latest developments in novel synthesis and fabrication procedures, the unique capabilities of some powerful, in situ characterization techniques vital to unraveling the mechanisms of charge and mass transport processes associated with battery performance, and the outlook for future-generation batteries that exploit nanoscale materials for significantly improved performance to meet the ever-increasing demands of emerging technologies.