I think the biggest challenge for emerging battery technologies is the gap between academic research and industrial production and application. Often exciting results from publications can be insufficiently relevant to the practical use of the materials due to various reasons such as scalability of the synthesis, sustainability of the processing, the non-standardized testing protocols to test batteries and so on. Although the development of many emerging battery technologies is still at infancy, we can learn from the paths to commercialization of Li-ion batteries and more recent Na-ion batteries when researching new materials for new batteries. Another challenge I think is that we need more support for the research of emerging battery technologies, be it more funding, more attention from industry, or more opportunities for academics to talk with industry, even though the return to the support will be in a long term. The success of Na-ion batteries is a good example.

I’m very excited about the new advances of Na-ion batteries transforming from lab research to commercial products, which has made Na-ion batteries coming into the spotlight of electrochemical energy storage. I’m also very excited to see a range of emerging battery systems including K, Ca, Mg, and Al are gaining rapidly increasing attention. Many interesting research results of these systems have diversified the energy research landscape and further our understanding of electrochemistry.

Gold open access allows research results to be disseminated quickly and widely. This is crucial for fast paced research areas like materials science and particularly beneficial for researchers working in these areas. Materials Advances is in the RSC materials journal family. It will give a wide exposure of the research published in the journal to the community.