Editorial: [Emerging Materials and Structures for Future Renewable Energy Conversion and Large-Scale Storage Technology]

Wenxiu Que^1*Xingtian Yin¹Yawei Yang¹Fengyu Shen²

• ¹Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
• ²Berkeley Lab (DOE), Berkeley, United States

conversion and storage technologies. Beyond incremental advances in mature systems such as silicon photovoltaics and lithium-ion batteries, researchers are now exploring disruptive materials and device architectures that can overcome fundamental efficiency limits, enable flexible or wearable configurations, and integrate energy harvesting with storage in a single platform. This Research Topic aims to highlight the most promising experimental and theoretical breakthroughs at the intersection of chemistry, materials science, and device engineering. The four contributions collected here span earth-abundant materials for solar cell and photocatalysis, solid-state electrolytes and redox-active frameworks for next-generation batteries and supercapacitors, as well as quantum dot based infrared photodetectors. Collectively, these studies demonstrate how precise control over composition, morphology, crystal facets, surface chemistry, and interfacial coupling can be translated into higher device performance under realistic operating conditions. In the first contribution, Xie et al. develop a low-temperature solvothermal route for producing highly crystalline SnO2 nanoparticles that can be directly dispersed in n-butanol and serve as efficient electron transport layers (ETLs) in perovskite solar cells. By varying the SnO2 concentration between 5 and 60 mg•mL -1 , the authors identify an optimal condition of 15 mg•mL -1 , which provides the best balance between film transparency, perovskite crystallinity, and interfacial charge recombination. The optimized devices achieve a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 15.61% in rigid cells, while flexible counterparts fabricated on PEN/ITO substrates retain 94% of this performance (14.75%), which ranked among the highest PCE reported at that time for low-temperature flexible perovskite architectures. This work and improved long-term cycling stability (99.4%@5500 cycles), while maintaining mechanical stretchability exceeding 200% strain. Symmetric supercapacitors using this optimized PVA-H2SO4-V4C3Tx MXene electrolyte achieved a capacitance of 370 F•g -1 at 1 A•g -1 and an energy density of 4.6 Wh•kg -1 , nearly twice that of devices using pure PVA-H2SO4 electrolytes. This study exemplifies how two-dimensional carbides can synergistically enhance ion and electron transport in soft polymer systems, offering a scalable route toward deformable and self-healing power sources for next-generation wearable electronics. We thank all authors for their insightful contributions and the reviewers for their constructive suggestions that sharpened each manuscript. Collectively, these studies illuminate a clear trajectory for the field: renewable energy devices will increasingly rely on chemically designed interfaces forged at low temperature, self-assembled from earth-abundant elements, and capable of multifunctional operation under mechanical or environmental stress. We anticipate that the showcased concepts, including nanoscale engineering of ETL, MXene-hydrogel electrolytes, facet-controlled CO2 catalysts, and ligand-optimized QD inks, will seed translational research bridging laboratory records to pilot-line manufacturability, ultimately accelerating the global transition toward a resilient and carbon-neutral energy economy.