Cost-Driven Battery Materials: Interfacial Engineering, Scalable Manufacturing, and Electrode Design for Affordable Energy Storage

The growing demand for grid-scale energy storage has created an urgent need for battery technologies that are not only high-performing, but also economically viable and affordable to manufacture at scale. While many recent advances in battery research have focused on maximizing energy density or introducing novel materials, cost and manufacturing feasibility remain the most critical -yet often overlooked- factors for large-scale deployment. This Research Topic will highlight cost-driven strategies for practical energy storage systems, with emphasis on material innovation, interfacial engineering, sustainable manufacturing, and long-term reliability. The scope includes lithium-ion, sodium-ion, flow battery, and other emerging chemistries where affordability and scalability are central design considerations.This Research Topic aims to address a central challenge in stationary energy storage: how to develop battery systems that are not only technically advanced, but also truly cost-effective and scalable for large-scale deployment. While the field has made remarkable strides in performance, cost remains the principal barrier between laboratory innovation and real-world adoption. Much of today’s battery research still emphasizes performance metrics without fully addressing practical barriers such as material cost and abundance, manufacturing complexity and process simplicity, long-term reliability, and system-level economic feasibility. Through this Topic, we aim to shift the lens, placing cost and manufacturability not as secondary considerations, but as primary design principles. We hope to promote work that can support innovation within existing Li-ion systems, accelerate the practical implementation of sodium-ion batteries, and encourage research that explicitly connects technical performance to economic viability and deployment readiness.This Research Topic welcomes original research, reviews, perspectives, and case studies that advance cost-effective battery technologies for stationary energy storage applications. The scope includes innovation in established systems such as lithium-ion batteries, emerging systems such as sodium-ion and flow batteries, and other materials or cell concepts with clear relevance to low-cost energy storage. Topics of interest include low-cost material design and substitution strategies, interfacial engineering, electrolyte optimization, simplified or energy-efficient manufacturing processes, techno-economic analyses, and strategies to improve long-term reliability, safety, and practical scalability. Contributions that explicitly address cost implications, manufacturing feasibility, or deployment economics are especially encouraged. Submissions should clearly articulate the relevance of the research to affordable and scalable stationary energy storage systems, highlighting implications for practice and policy where applicable. Topic editors: Rachel Carter, Yifan Zhao, Ohmin Kwon, Yi Liu Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/82036/cost-driven-battery-materials-interfacial-engineering-scalable-manufacturing-and-electrode-design-for-affordable-energy-storage