Nanowires for Electrochemical Energy Storage

Nanomaterials provide many desirable properties for electrochemical energy storage devices due to their nanoscale size effect, which could be significantly different from bulk or micron-sized materials. Particularly, confined dimensions play important roles in determining the properties of nanomaterials, such as the kinetics of ion diffusion, the magnitude of strain/stress, and the utilization of active materials. Nanowires, as one of the representative one-dimensional nanomaterials, have great capability for realizing a variety of applications in the fields of energy storage since they could maintain electron transport along the long axis and have a confinement effect across the diameter. In this review, we give a systematic overview of the state-of-the-art research progress on nanowires for electrochemical energy storage, from rational design and synthesis, in situ structural characterizations, to several important applications in energy storage including lithium-ion batteries, lithium-sulfur batteries, sodium-ion batteries, and supercapacitors. The problems and limitations in electrochemical energy storage and the advantages in utilizing nanowires to address the issues and improve the device performance are pointed out. At the end, we also discuss the challenges and demonstrate the prospective for the future development of advanced nanowire-based energy storage devices.