Rechargeable lithium ion batteries are a part of our daily lives, most people carry one in their mobile phone or lap-top computer. Lithium ion batteries are often much lighter than equivalent secondary batteries and have the advantage of low self-discharge rates, offering longer battery life. The future of lithium ion batteries lies not only in more efficient consumer electronics but in clean energy storage and hybrid electric vehicles.

In their Dalton Transactions Frontier article, Yi Xie and Changzheng Wu from the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, give an overview of recent advances in the application of nanoarchitectured electrodes in rechargeable lithium ion batteries.

Nanostructured materials open up new avenues in the development of ever more efficient lithium ion batteries. Characteristics such as higher electrode/eletrolyte contact area and short path lengths for lithium ion transport are among the advantages nanostructures offer over bulk materials. 

A hard template route towards nanoarchitectures requires simplifying the synthetic procedure and lowering the cost of the template itself, before being considered industrially. Xie says 'The next crucial step for lithium ion battery electrodes is the elaboration of nanoarchitectures from a simple chemical reaction process in a facile and inexpensive way.' Newer template-free methodologies could potentially offer this simplified low-cost route, suitable for mass production.  

However the scientific and technical challenge of achieving a selective nanoarchitectured material for a lithium ion battery still remains. Xie and Wu do admit that only a few examples of template-free routes have been achieved so far, but they believe that new and improvements will be reported soon.