Materials for Sustainable Energy Applications

The impending energy crisis brought on by the running out of finite and non-homogenously distributed fossil fuel reserves and the worldwide increase in energy demand has prompted vast research in the development of sustainable energy technologies in the last few decades. However, the efficiency of most of these new technologies is relatively small and therefore it needs to be increased to eventually replace conventional technologies based on fossil fuels. The required efficiency increase primarily relies on the ability to improve the performance of the functional materials which are at the heart of these technologies. The purpose of this book is to give a unified and comprehensive presentation of the fundamentals and the use and design of novel materials for efficient sustainable energy applications, such as conversion, storage, transmission, and consumption. The book presents general coverage of the use and design of advanced materials for sustainable energy applications. Thus, the book addresses all the relevant aspects, such as materials for energy conversion, storage, transmission, and consumption.

David Muñoz-Rojas received his degree in organic chemistry in 1999 and a chemical engineering master degree (2000) at the Instituto Químico de Sarrià (IQS, Barcelona), obtaining the P. Salvador Gil, S.I. 2000 prize. He then obtained his PhD in materials science (2004) at the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Barcelona. Thereafter, he worked as a postdoc at the Laboratoire de Réactivité et Chimie des Solides in Amiens (France), the Research Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Barcelona and at the University of Cambridge (Device Materials Group). He is currently a permanent researcher at the Laboratoire des Matériaux et du Génie Physique in Grenoble. His research focuses on using and developing cheap and scalable chemical approaches for the fabrication of novel functional materials for electronic and optoelectronic applications. During his research carrier, he has discovered and characterized several new oxides and hybrid nanostructures, for which he has developed innovative synthetic approaches involving heretoregenous redox reactions.

Xavier Moya is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, University of Cambridge. He also holds a Research Fellowship at Churchill College Cambridge. He graduated in physics at the University of Barcelona in 2003, and then obtained his Ph.D in physics in 2008.He then moved to Cambridge to continue his research at the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy. His research experience and interests span different aspects of condensed-matter physics and material science. He is particularly interested in the physical effects that exhibit solid-state materials due to the coupling between their different degrees of freedom, e.g. structural, magnetic, and electrical. His current research focuses on the study of caloric and magnetoelectric effects in multiferroic materials.