A review on infiltration techniques for energy conversion and storage devices: from fundamentals to applications

Infiltration is a facile, effective, and intuitive fabrication technique that provides nanostructured surfaces for electrodes and catalysts. This review article systematically summarizes the principles, detailed parameters, and synthesis strategies of the penetration techniques. Detailed parameters of scaffold preparation, precursor penetration, and heat treatment are covered, and strategies for a precise control of materials design are provided. Subsequently, recent reports demonstrating the versatile applications of infiltration techniques to energy conversion and storage devices, including solid oxide fuel cells, solid oxide electrolysis cells, and rechargeable battery cells are provided. Finally, the review concludes with our perspective on the future outlook of the infiltration technique. We expect that this comprehensive review will be a guide to designing a variety of materials with careful control of the infiltration methods and simultaneously applying these materials to various energy devices, paving new directions in a broad area of research.