Advanced Nanomaterials for Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage covers recent progress made in the rational design and engineering of functional nanomaterials for battery and supercapacitor applications in the forms of electrode materials, separators and electrolytes.

This volume presents recent research work focused in the development of adequate theoretical and numerical formulations to describe the behavior of advanced engineering materials. Particular emphasis is devoted to applications in the fields of biological tissues, phase changing and porous materials, polymers and to micro/nano scale modeling. Sensitivity analysis, gradient and non-gradient based optimization procedures are involved in many of the chapters, aiming at the solution of constitutive inverse problems and parameter identification.

Even such seemingly different materials like wood and sandstone share similarities: both are porous and exhibit hysteretic behavior upon water uptake and evaporation, i.e., their properties depend not only on the current state of the materials, but on the history of state changes. Both materials are examples for strongly-coupled elastic-fluid systems which are ruled by the interplay between the moisture content and the mechanical stress field. Porous materials which exhibit hysteresis are becoming increasingly important for carbon sequestration, multifunctional materials design and mechanical control of surface catalysis.

This comprehensive text collects the progress made in recent years in the fabrication, processing, and performance of organic nanophotonic materials and devices. The first part of the book addresses photonic nan of abrications in a chapter on multiphoton processes in nanofabrication and microscopy imaging. The second part of the book is focused on nanoscale light sources for integrated nanophotonic circuits, and is composed of three chapters on organic nano/microcavities, organic laser materials, and polymer light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs).

The development of smart materials for environmental applications is a highly innovative and promising new approach to meet the increasing demands from society on water resources and pollution remediation. Smart materials with surfaces that can reversibly respond to stimuli from internal and external environments by changing their properties show great promise as solutions for global environmental issues. Many of these functional materials are inspired by biological systems, that use sophisticated material interfaces to display high levels of adaptability to their environment.

Polyrotaxane is a necklace-like supramolecule in which many cyclic molecules are threaded into a single polymer chain and can be cross-linked to produce functional polymeric materials. The resulting materials have movable cross-linking giving unique properties different from other polymer networks with fixed covalent bonds gaining much attention for new films, elastomers and coatings.

Information technology is essential to our daily life, and the limitations of silicone based memory systems mean a growing amount of research is focussed on finding an inexpensive alternative to meet our needs and allow the continued development of the industry. Inorganic silicone based technology is increasingly costly and complex and is physically limited by the problems of scaling down.

Because of their unique properties (size, shape, and surface functions), functional materials are gaining significant attention in the areas of energy conversion and storage, sensing, electronics, photonics, and biomedicine.  Within the chapters of this book written by well-known researchers, one will find the range of methods that have been developed for preparation and functionalization of organic, inorganic and hybrid structures which are the necessary building blocks for the architecture of various advanced functional materials.