Electrochemical energy storage to power the 21st century

Climate change, diminishing reserves of fossil fuels, energy security, and consumer demand all depend on alternatives to our current course of energy usage and consumption. A broad consensus concurs that implementing energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies are necessities now rather than luxuries to be deferred to some distant future. Neither effort can effect serious change in our energy patterns without marked improvements in electrical energy storage, with electrochemical energy storage in batteries and electrochemical capacitors serving as key components of any plausible scenario. 1, 2 Consumer expectations of convenience and long-lived portable power further drive the need to push these old devices onto a new performance curve. This issue of MRS Bulletin addresses the significant advances occurring in research laboratories around the world as old electrode materials and designs are re-envisioned, and abandoned materials of the past are reinvigorated by arranging matter and function on the nanoscale to bring batteries and electrochemical capacitors into the 21st century.