Surface engineering of oxide nanostructures for efficient energy technologies

Abstract

Nanostructured mixed-conducting oxides are key components for energy conversion and energy storage devices. Improving their functionality is of large importance in order to tackle the growing demand of energy. All nanostructure inherently exhibit a high surface area, which enables tailoring their electrochemical properties by surface engineering. Modifying the surface properties offers the possibility to manipulate electronic and ionic charge transport as well as charge storage in the surface region. In addition, it allows the increase of the thermal and chemical stability of nanostructures by the deposition of a thin protective coating. Due to the large number of possibilities of controlling the electrochemical properties of nanostructures for energy devices, surface engineering plays an important role for the design of efficient energy technologies.