Thin Films for Energy Harvesting, Conversion, and Storage

Thin film-based energy harvesting, conversion, and storage devices have attracted great attention due to their attractive potential for improved efficiency, manufacturability, and production costs. Nowadays, thin film electrodes have been used in a wide range of fields, such as photovoltaics, fuel cells, supercapacitors, flow batteries, and rechargeable metal ion batteries. In order to enhance the efficiency of energy conversion, rational thin film design strategies, novel thin film materials, and the fundamental understanding of structure–property correlation have been systematically studied. For examples, thin film materials can be fabricated by various methods, including thermal evaporation method, electrochemical deposition, atomic layer deposition, chemical vapor deposition, pulsed laser deposition, and molecular beam epitaxy. By controlling these thin film fabrication techniques, thin film electrodes with desirable properties are obtained and can be used towards improving the device performance via fundamental understanding of the structure–property–performance correlations.