Materials of interest for energy conversion and optimal energy utilization will continue to be one of the primary areas of research across the globe. Efforts to reduce the gap between manufacturing and fundamental research and development in areas such as fuel cells, hydrogen storage, ocean wave generators, photovoltaics, storage batteries, thermoelectrics, ultracapacitors and windmills are anticipated to grow significantly. These efforts will be accompanied by demands on minimizing pollution, maximizing recycling and reuse of materials, reduction in manufacturing costs and return on investments. Hybrid approaches to energy conversion -for example, wind/photovoltaics 1 or photovoltaics/photothermal 2 -will be the landscape of the future. From a materials perspective, approaches such as Roll to Roll (R2R) Processing Technology 3 will be implemented for a variety of energy-related applications.Carbon continues to highlight the landscape of materials research. Q-carbon, reported recently by Narayan and Bhaumik, 4,5 with its unusual properties of ferromagnetism, mechanical strength and low work function, has potential applications in switching, power electronics and electronic displays. Efforts to develop cleaner fuel sources and reduce CO 2 to CO by way of electrocatalysis have been making significant progress. 6 The International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies (ICSET) 2014 (see http://www.icset.ex.ac.uk/) was held in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, on 11-13 December 2014. The conference was organized by the PSG College of Technology (PSGCT), Tamil Nadu, India; the University of Exeter, UK; the University of Oslo, Norway; the Institute for Energy Technology, Norway and the Bergen University College, Norway. Six plenary lectures and 16 invited talks focusing on materials and energy were given at the conference. The oral sessions focused on power electronics, wind energy, dye-sensitized solar cells, thin-film photovoltaics, nanomaterials, hydrogen storage, electrolytes, photocatalysis, biomaterials and thermal energy.
This joint issue of Nanomaterials and Energy and Emerging MaterialsResearch is dedicated to selected papers that were presented at ICSET 2014.The first of the papers in this joint issue presents 'A study of plasmonic effect in silicon (Si) solar cells with silver nanoparticles '. 7 This paper is a collaborative study between K. Yakubov of the Urganch branch of Tashkent Medical Academy, Urganch, Uzbekistan, J. Zhanabergenov of the Department of Physics, Nukus State Pedagogical Institute, Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan, and S. Turemuratov and U. Ernazarov of the Complex Institute of Natural Sciences, Karakalpak Branch of Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences, Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan. In this paper, a study of the plasmonic effect of small-size silver nanoparticles in siliconbased solar cells is presented. The particles were deposited on the surface of Si by thermal evaporation method. The size of the particles and their distribution were studied using scanning electron microscopy. It is shown t...