Editorial

Our society of today needs abundant energy for running our cars, homes, factories...our society of tomorrow will also need small quantities of abundantly distributed energy. Therefore, in addition to mega-energy, micro-energy is an issue, too. Wireless sensor networks, Internet of Things, and Trillion sensors are buzzwords and examples of the fact that energy autonomy is one of the most demanded functionalities in off-grid applications. Primary batteries may not suffice, or be impractical, in many such situations and other energy embodiments need to be considered. In this respect, the combination of energy harvesters and secondary batteries may be a pretty universal energy autonomy solution.

Materials and nanotechnologies are key for such developments in storage or harvesting devices. With this aim in mind, scientific responsibles of the FP7 European project SiNERGY (GA 604169), Dario Narducci, Philippe Vereecken, Rob van Schaijk, and myself decided to organise Symposium W “Materials and Systems for micro-energy harvesting and storage” within the E-MRS Spring meeting 2016. This was a materials conference, but our intention was also to put some emphasis in the road to devices, especially into technologies that offer cost-effective and scalable production of materials and devices. Hopefully this may reflect in some of the papers that have found their way into this number of Energy Harvesting and Systems, whom I thank a lot for hosting some symposium results.

Finally, I would like to also thank other EU FP7 funded partner projects (NanoCaTE – GA 604647, Manpower – GA 604360, Matflexend – GA 604093), which complemented SiNERGY technological approach and offered inspiration and support for the symposium.