Engineering of benzoselenadiazole based organic-inorganic nanohybrids for energy storage and energy conversion

Abstract

The climate change along with rapid energy consumption, scarcity of the fossil fuels and natural resources are becoming major threats to our planet accompanied by the destruction of ecosystems, habitats, extinction of wild life and deterioration of the environment. All these factors are encouraging modern society and researchers towards the development of renewable, efficient and sustainable resources using environmentally friendly technologies for efficient energy storage and conversion materials.[1-11] As a consequence, energy is enormously being produced from natural resources such as water, wind and sunlight. Despite their widespread use, they have some limitations, such as the sun not shining at night, the wind not blowing when needed and so on. As a result, energy storage systems are becoming increasingly important in our daily lives. Several electrochemical energy conversion and storage systems such as fuel cells, batteries, supercapacitors and electrolyzers have been extensively investigated to achieve higher energy and efficiency.[12-17] The performance of such devices have to be considerably improved to meet the basic necessities of human life including portable electronics, hybrid electric vehicles, large industrial equipment along with the proliferation of new materials and innovation of electrochemical interface at nanoscale. The traditional capacitors and batteries are frequently used. But, several drawbacks are accompanied with slow power delivery or uptake and reactivity of metal electrodes leading to dendrites formation, which can reduce the cycle life of capacitors. Since, a number of applications are needed to deliver faster and high energy systems. Electrochemical capacitors (ECs) or supercapacitors are fulfilling all the requirements. These are essential substitutes for energy storage systems that have the opportunity to fulfill rising energy demand and environmental concerns.