Graphene-based Smart Energy Materials for Fuel and Solar Cell Applications

Energy is an incising subject matter and has had both positive and negative impacts on our society. Admittance to profuse, inexpensive, unharmed, hygienic energy is advantageous for human beings. However, the process of changing one form of energy into another, hauling and plentiful use can have negative impacts on health, the environment, and cost-cutting measures of our society. These days and at this age, the production of energy and stockpiles is one of the two main burning issues. Regrettably, conventional energy producers are not competent enough to respond to ecological transformations, whereas accustomed energy storage devices are deficient in special functionalities apart from supplying electricity. Graphene, composed of a single-layered graphite with a two-dimensional sp2-hybridized carbon network, has recently gained tremendous research interest due to its peculiar physical and chemical properties. Gratifying from unrivalled physicochemical properties, graphene-based materials facilitate dealing with the aforesaid smoldering issues and, in recent times, have been widely studied in various energy conversion and storage applications such as supercapacitors, fuel cells, batteries, and photovoltaic devices or solar cells. In this book chapter, we summarise the recent progress reported in the synthesis and fabrication of graphene-based smart energy materials with their applications in various energy storage systems. In addition to this, the panorama and future challenges in both scalable manufacturing and more energy storage-related applications are covered in this chapter as well.

Keywords: Applications of Graphene, Dye-sensitised Solar Cell (DSSCs), Electrolyte, Electrode, Energy Materials, Fabrication, Fuel Cells, Graphene, Graphene-Based Naterials, Hybrid Materials, Membrane Fuel Cells, Modification, Organic Solar Cells (OSCs), Perovskite Solar Cells (PSCs), Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs), Power Conversion Efficiency, Properties, Solar Cells, Synthesis, Various forms of Graphene.