The increasing environmental problems and deficiencies of sustainable energy sources have become serious issues that are urgently in need of being addressed. With the backdrop of limiting supplies of fossil fuels and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and associated global climate change, there is an urgency to construct energy-converting systems which can move more in the direction of sustainability of nonpolluting energy generation.

The performance of materials depends critically on their microstructures, which requires the development of materials processing techniques to obtain the desired microstructures and morphologies. It is of great importance in future technological applications to understand how the materials behave at nanoscales during working and how controllably manufacture. No matter physical or chemical preparation, forward-looking theoretical guidance and characterization proof are necessary for explaining the formation mechanism so as to design devices with expected properties for nonpolluting energy generation and environmental protection. The aim of this issue is to discuss the nanotechnology for fabrication of advanced nanoscales materials and the recent development of nanostructural analysis techniques for their energy and environmental applications.

Those original and review articles are welcomed, in which researchers expend massive efforts on how to explore more and more excellent energy-converting systems and try to develop and fabricate advanced materials with new ideas and methods to deal with the environmental problems. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Materials for hydrogen generation and storage
• Materials for CO2 capture and reduction; Solar cells
• Batteries and supercapacitors
• III-V semiconductors and energy applications
• Organic semiconductors and energy applications
• Quantum dots
• Materials for environmental protection
• Theoretical calculation and simulation on nanomaterials for energy-converting systems
• New physical and chemical formation nanotechnologies and nanostructural characterization techniques