“If you want innovation, if you want to have engineers of tomorrow, you have to have science.”
Those were the words of Bill Nye the Science guy at the 2015 Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision K-12 national science competition.
A group of students from West Salem High School in Oregon took first place overall in the competition this year with their prototype of programmable bio-scaffolding that could eliminated uncontrollable bleeding from open wounds in those who take blood thinning medications.
Nye has been involved with this competition for more than a decade. Not only does Nye hope that this competition will help encourage young people to value the importance of the sciences, but that it will also highlight the need for gender inclusion in STEM.
“Half the humans are girls and women, so we want half the engineers and scientists to be girls and women,” said Nye.
Printing technologies in an atmospheric environment offer the potential for low-cost and materials-efficient alternatives for manufacturing electronics and energy devices such as luminescent displays, thin-film transistors, sensors, thin-film photovoltaics, fuel cells, capacitors, and batteries. Significant progress has been made in the area of printable functional organic and inorganic materials including conductors, semiconductors, and dielectric and luminescent materials.
These new printable functional materials have and will continue to enable exciting advances in printed electronics and energy devices. Some examples are printed amorphous oxide semiconductors, organic conductors and semiconductors, inorganic semiconductor nanomaterials, silicon, chalcogenide semiconductors, ceramics, metals, intercalation compounds, and carbon-based materials.
A special focus issue of the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology was created about the publication of state-of-the-art efforts that address a variety of approaches to printable functional materials and device. This focus issue, consisting of a total of 15 papers, includes both invited and contributed papers reflecting recent achievements in printable functional materials and devices.
The topics of these papers span several key ECS technical areas, including batteries, sensors, fuel cells, carbon nanostructures and devices, electronic and photonic devices, and display materials, devices, and processing. The overall collection of this focus issue covers an impressive scope from fundamental science and engineering of printing process, ink chemistry and ink conversion processes, printed devices, and characterizations to the future outlook for printable functional materials and devices.
The video below show demonstrates Inkjet Printed Conductive Tracks for Printed Electronic conducted by S.-P. Chen, H.-L. Chiu, P.-H. Wang, and Y.-C. Liao, Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1 Sec. 4 Roosevelt Road, Taipei 10617, Taiwan.
Step-by-step explanation of the video:
For printed electronic devices, metal thin film patterns with great conductivities are required. Three major ways to produce inkjet-printed metal tracks will be shown in this video.
Tesla was known for discovering amazing things and then forgetting to write them down. Image: The Oatmeal
Nikola Tesla is one of the most recognizable scientists in history; unfortunately the majority of his life was dominated by poverty, isolation, and intense emotional relationships with pigeons. Even with all of this, Telsa’s story is both inspiring, and often times even funny. Here are a few things you may not have known about Tesla.
He once made $2/day digging ditches
After graduating from university, Tesla had big dreams of revolutionizing discovery and development in electricity. He began that journey by working at Edison’s electric company in Paris, but traveled to the United States in hopes of working directly with Edison. Of course, upon seeing his potential, Edison offered him a job. However, Edison never paid Tesla the promised amount of $50,000 for the design of an improved direct current generator. With this, Tesla left Edison’s lab and dug ditches to make ends meet until he found enough backers to start his own lab.
Telsa paid an overdue bill with a “death beam”
Most people know that Tesla had quite the eccentric personality, but his later years in life really demonstrated this. Tesla picked pigeons over people and jumped from one hotel to another living a life of isolation. In an attempt to pay his overdue bill at the Governor Clinton hotel, he offered the establishment a wooden case containing a “death beam.” Tesla stated that it held a potentially war-ending weapon, but that the hotel must never open it. They listened… for a while. Once Tesla died the hotel opened the box to unveil nothing but old electrical components.
Top male and female finishers, Matthew Lawder and Elizabeth Jones.
We’ve got the results of the Free the Science 5K held during the 227th ECS Meeting. The reigning champ, Matthew Lawder, was first overall with a time of 16:45. In the women’s category, Elizabeth Jones was the first with a time of 22:06.
This race is Lawder’s third straight overall Free the Science 5K win. His first victory was during our Orlando meeting, followed by our meeting in Cancun.
“I’m hoping to go the the Phoenix meeting so I can defend my title,” said Lawder.
Looking to inspire young people and help propel them in scientific careers, Zach took it upon himself to develop an affordable, self-automated, easy to use nanolab.
What Zach is doing is allowing students to understand complex science and have a hands-on experience in making patterned nanowires. Typically nanowires need a multimillion dollar lab to be produced, but Zach has streamlined this process in order to give high school-aged students all over the country a chance to immerse themselves in this seemingly limitless science.
“I’m just looking to get more students involved in electrochemistry… in the science,” said Zach.
From undergrads to PhD students, ECS’s David Wipf covers the educational spectrum at Mississippi State University. His goal? Wipf wants to get more students interested in science by showing them the human side of scientists and what happens beyond the lab.
“It’s great that students get to hear how these scientists started,” said Wipf. “They weren’t super geniuses—they just liked science.”
As a professor in analytical chemistry, Wipf is always striving to get his students excited about science. While guests on the ECS podcast—such as Subhash Singhal and John Turner—happen to be very prominent scientists, Wipif appreciates the fact listeners get to see the unique stories of the guests’ roots and early scientific career.
“The podcasts show that everybody could do it if they wanted to,” said Wipf.
ECS’s job board keeps you up-to-date with the latest career opportunities in electrochemical and solid state science. Check out the latest openings that have been added to the board.
Senior Manager, External Technology Energizer – Westlake, Ohio
Candidate is required to establish agreements and negotiate contracts with technology leaders including companies (public, private and start-up) and universities and national laboratories. Contracts will be vetted internally with line management and legal prior to executing.
Electrochemistry Senior Engineer Johnson Controls – Milwaukee, WI
The electrochemists uses his/her knowledge and understanding of the chemical and/or electrochemical processes that occur during the conversion of materials in the active masses of a battery, and how these phenomena affect battery performance under different applications, to recommend design or component changes to target performance specifications.
We are working with Professor Gerri Botte, Center Director and Lisa Rooney, Industry Liaison at CEER to encourage participation in the roadmap process. Attached is a Call for Presenters for an Innovation Workshop in July. Due to the timelines for developing the roadmap, there is a short window to submit your application. Therefore, we have prepared a streamlined application that you can find here.
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