Increasing supply of energy is required to cater the rapid economic growth, which has posed a huge burden on the current energy infrastructure and the environment. The excessive consumption of limited fossil fuel tends to dry up the energy sources and causes severe environmental pollution and global warming. Such challenging issues have motivated the scientific community to seek next generation energy sources and to develop innovative methodologies to address the key environmental issues to realize a sustainable future. Nanostructured materials possess intriguing physical and chemical properties and have recently emerged as ideal platforms to solve many key challenges in energy (e.g., energy conversion (solar cells and fuel cells) and energy storage (lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors)) and environment (e.g., green catalysts, sensors, and pollution prevention, treatment, and remediation). In particular, nanostructured materials feature with controllable size, shape, composition, structure, and surface, which are difficult or impossible to achieve in their bulk materials. Such unique features of nanostructured materials can be further tailored and engineered to specifically tackle a particular energy and/or environmental challenge.

This special issue is intent to bring over recent advances and R&D activities in developing nanostructured materials for groundbreaking applications in energy and environment. Specific emphasis will be on design, synthesis, characterization, and applications of nanostructured materials in energy and environment. We invite submissions of original research articles and review articles that cover a wide range of recent advancement in this emerging field. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Design and synthesis of functional nanostructured materials
• Nanostructured materials for solar energy conversion and storage
• Nanostructured materials for advanced sensor applications
• Nanostructured catalysts for energy and environmental applications
• Nanostructured materials for advanced batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells, and photoelectrochemical cells
• Nanostructured materials for thermoelectric applications

Before submission, authors should carefully read over the journal’s Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jnm/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/jnm/enen/ according to the following timetable: