"Economical energy" has been listed as the number one challenge in the 14 Grand Challenges by the National Academy of Engineering. For several decades, researchers have made tremendous efforts toward finding a solution to this challenge, but no satisfactory answer has been reached. Admittedly, our knowledge of the materials that can potentially solve this challenge is ever growing, but the integration of these materials into practical applications has not yet met our requirements and is still far from our expectations. Organic polymers, composed of earth-abundant elements, are low-cost and easily-processible materials that can be manufactured into a wide range of macroscopic and microscopic structures. Inorganic nanoparticles, on the other hand, have tremendously rich optical, magnetic, catalytic, and plasmonic properties. Separately, neither has been utilized to the full potential for energy applications.
