With the fast-developing of human society, the transformation of the nation’s energy consumption towards the renewable energy sources is one of the major challenges for the upcoming decades. Thoughtfully implemented solar energy storage and application technologies can reduce fuel demand, improve energy reliability, provide emergency power in case of interrupted generation, reduce consumer and utility costs, decrease CO₂ emissions, and increase the amount of distributed renewable energy into the grid. The field has attracted wide interest because it has an intrinsic interdisciplinary nature, not only limited to physics, but also connected to chemistry, materials science, optics, mechanics, and intimately related to application fields such as device and electrical engineering.
 
In view of these developments, we, together with the editorial office of the journal "Frontiers of Physics", have decided that it is timely to edit a special issue dedicated to the topic of “Solar Energy Storage and Applications”. The scope of this focus issue in Frontiers of Physics would cover all of the aspects from theoretical, computational, to experimental progress in the field. This special issue will present the major recent progress in this field from the best teams all over the world. We do hope that the issue will form a broad overview of the current state of this cutting-edge field.
 
Specific topics of interest covered in this issue include
 ●  Solar water splitting and CO₂ conversion
 ●  Environmental and Synthetic photocatalysis
 ●  Photoelectrochemical conversion and devices
 ●  Molecular and biomimetic photosynthesis
 ●  Photo-induced charge carrier transfer, mechanism and modelling
 ●  Photovoltaic materials and devices
 ●  Energy storage materials, devices and applications
 
We are looking for high profile scientists from China and overseas to contribute Review or View & Perspective in the foresaid areas. Please feel free to choose a striking topic that best fits the issue. Co-authorship is welcome. There is no strict length limit for each article, and for each review at least 15 pages length is highly expected.
 
The tentative published date of the special issue is the Spring of 2019, so we expect that the review articles will be submitted by January 31, 2019. The sample article (TEX template) can be downloaded via http://journal.hep.com.cn/fop/EN/column/column15258.shtml and the new manuscript can be submitted online through http://cn.manuscriptcentral.com/fop. All PDFs of the special issue will be openly accessed at http://journal.hep.com.cn/fop, and a copy of the volume will be mailed to all participants.
 
Sincerely,
 
Guest Editors
Min Liu, Central South University, minliu@csu.edu.cn
Haotian Wang, Harvard University, hwang@rowland.harvard.edu