Themed collection Energy Advances: Highlight USA & Canada

Interfacial engineering plays a key role in solving the reactivity puzzle of lithium metal batteries. Here, we discuss the interfacial engineering pieces that are in place and the ones that still need to be fitted.

Electrochemical technologies support the transition towards carbon-neutral chemical manufacturing and we need new approaches to accelerate electrolysis scale-up.

This review explores machine learning's role in energy chemistry, spanning organic photovoltaics, perovskites, catalysis, and batteries, highlighting its potential to accelerate eco-friendly, sustainable energy development.

Hydrogen (H₂) production along with CCUS (carbon capture, utilization, and storage) are two key areas for transition to net-zero emission. Carbon-neutral liquid e-fuels produced from H₂ and captured CO₂ are practical alternatives to fossil fuels.

High-quality sustainable diesel was produced by standalone and co-hydrotreating biomass-derived catalytic fast pyrolysis oil.

Photo-accelerated oxidization enables fast production of a Spiro-OMeTAD hole transport layer in perovskite solar cells. This strategy delivers high power conversion efficiency and overcomes barriers to mass manufacturing.

Lithium–ion batteries (LIBs) are ubiquitous in everyday applications.

The prevalence of covalent lignin–carbohydrate complex (LCC) bonds likely foster inter-moiety reaction pathways, marked by significant kinetic and thermochemical barriers in the intra-moiety cellulose decomposition within LCC.

A new computational screening pipeline accelerates the process of identifying potential Li-ion cathodes, with a demonstration case upon its preliminary application.

Permeability distribution imposes substantial control over CO₂ flow path, in situ temperature changes, and fluid pressure propagation in offshore geologic storage of CO₂.

This study introduces an advanced automated system for designing diverse chemical or electrochemical systems, requiring minimal user expertise, and enabling designing and optimization from scratch.

Using satellite imagery we show that the installation footprint of grid-scale lithium-ion batteries is often comparable to much less energy-dense technologies such as aqueous battery systems.

Percolated electroactive material as electronically conductive network enables the high energy electroactive material with low intrinsic electronic conductivity at extremely high loading over 100 mg cm⁻².

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) allows electric vehicles to provide power and services to the grid. At scale, V2G can bolster renewable energy growth and eliminate storage and displace firm generators traditionally used to balance wind and solar intermittency.

Isoprene is converted to cycloalkanes by thermal dimerization followed by hydrogenation. The resulting blend exhibits outstanding jet fuel properties.