Introduction to the focus issue of selected presentations from the international meeting on lithium batteries (IMLB 2014)

Due to their compexity and lack of thermodynamic stability, the development of Li batteries requires a deep understanding of atomic structure, morphology, surface chemistry, and thermal and electrochemical processes—both within the materials and at their interfaces. Research and development of these systems must therefore involve state-of-the-art spectroscopy, microscopy, and computational studies, in combination with electrochemical and intensive engineering efforts. The many scientific and technological challenges facing Li battery development has attracted the attention of hundreds of prominents research groups worldwide to work in this field. Consequently, we have today a very strong scientific and technological community involved in Li battery R&D. The field of Li batteries has broadened in recent years to include several new battery technologies. These include intensive efforts to achieve high energy density in Li-oxygen and Li-sulfur battery systems, as well as for rechargeable sodium and magnesium battery concepts. More recently, work on nonaqueous flow batteries has also emerged strongly in this field. The most important international conference event in the Li battery community is the biannual International Meeting on Lithium Batteries (IMLB); a conference series founded by Bruno Scrosati which began 33 years ago. The IMLB meeting can, in fact, be seen as among the most important conferences related to power sources in general. The last meeting was held in Como, Italy, June 9-14, 2014, and was chaired by Dr. Scrosati. The co-chairs were Peter Bruce, Rosa Palacin, Jean-Marie Tarascon, Josh Thomas, Margret Wohlfahrt-Mehrens, and myself. New directions in Li battery development (as outlined above) were the special focus of this meeting. More than 50 talks and 600 posters were presented covering these new areas and related topics (including Na and Mg batteries), along with relevant analytical, engineering, and computational studies. The next IMLB meeting will take place in the summer of 2016 in Chicago and will be chaired by Khalil Amine from Argonne National Laboratory. The Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES) has agreed to publish focus issues related to IMLB beginning with the 2014 meeting. Important to note is that this focus issue is completely Open Access, enabling a much broader audience to read these papers than would have access with a subscription-only issue. Twenty-one papers have here been selected for this focus issue. These papers touch upon many important new aspects in the field and illustrate well the wide spectrum of topics that were discussed at the IMLB 2014 meeting. This focus issue can therefore be seen as a fitting epilogue for this excellent meeting. I want to thank Martin Winter, the former Technical Editor of JES and ECS Electrochemistry Letters for the technical interest area of batteries and energy storage, and the Associate Editors Thierry Brousse, Nae Lih Wu, and Venkat Srinivasan for their diligent editorial work. Many thanks also to the dedicated staff of the ECS Editorial Office.