Light-induced design of smart materials for energy devices

The stability of energy devices is a critical (but often disregarded) issue, since great focus is often devoted to the efficiency records (even if these values rapidly decrease upon time). However, today's research in the energy field must be connected to concepts such as long-term stability, safety and environmental impact. In this work, we present free-radical photopolymerization as an attractive technique for the design and straightforward preparation of polymeric components for different energy devices (both storage and conversion). Photopolymerization represents a very attractive technique to this purpose, since it does not require solvents, catalysts, thermal treatments and purification steps. The design of multifunctional photopolymers for dye-sensitized solar cells, perovskite solar cells, lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries and photoelectrochromic devices is demonstrated as an effective way to improve the stability (and sometimes also the efficiency) of these highly-in-vogue energy conversion and storage devices