Vilas Pol has assisted in the discovery of a nanoparticle network that could bring fast-charging batteries. He joined the Society in 2012.
Credit: Argonne National Laboratory

The Electrochemical Society’s Vilas Pol, along with a team of Purdue University researchers, has developed a nanoparticle network that could produce very fast-charging batteries.

This new electrode design for lithium-ion batteries has been shown to potentially reduce the charging time from hours to minutes, all by replacing the conventional graphite electrode with a network of tin-oxide nanoparticles.

This from Purdue University:

The researchers have performed experiments with a “porous interconnected” tin-oxide based anode, which has nearly twice the theoretical charging capacity of graphite. The researchers demonstrated that the experimental anode can be charged in 30 minutes and still have a capacity of 430 milliamp hours per gram (mAh g−1), which is greater than the theoretical maximum capacity for graphite when charged slowly over 10 hours.

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Find openings in your area via the ECS job board.

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:

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Chemical Engineering
Case Western Reserve University – Cleveland, Ohio
The Postdoctoral Research Associate will conduct research and development on titanium electrowinning from molten salts. Technical responsibilities will include high-temperature electrochemical reactor design and fabrication, experimental investigations of electrodeposition from molten salts, and some mathematical modeling studies.

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Find openings in your area via the ECS job board.

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:

Post-Doctoral Research Associate
North Carolina State University – Raleigh, North Carolina
The Postdoctoral Research Associate will focus his/her work on research and development of new lithium-sulfur batteries. The work includes the development of both electrode and electrolyte materials and the integration of these materials into lithium-sulfur batteries. The Postdoctoral Research Associate will be responsible on designing and carrying out experiments, analyzing data, writing reports, and/or help mentoring junior researchers to conduct their research.

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Chanyuan Liu, ECS member and Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, is the lead author on the nanopore study.
Credit: University of Maryland

The Electrochemical Society’s Chanyuan Liu, along with a team of University of Maryland researchers, believe they have developed a structure that could bring about the ultimate miniaturization of energy storage components.

The tiny structure, known as the nanopore, includes all the components of a battery and can be fully charged in 12 minutes and recharged thousands of times.

This from University of Maryland:

The structure is called a nanopore: a tiny hole in a ceramic sheet that holds electrolyte to carry the electrical charge between nanotube electrodes at either end. The existing device is a test, but the bitsy battery performs well.

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ECS past presidents who were involved with the Manhattan Project. Clockwise starting at the top left: Lyle I. Gilbertson, Walter J. Hamer, Norman Hackerman, Harold J. Read

Here in the home office we are not just honoring U.S. Veterans today. As a society with international membership, we are thinking about the men and women who have served their countries around the world.

We couldn’t help but look into how electrochemistry and solid state science might have shaped a soldier’s life.

It turns out, when you are working for an organization that has been around since 1902 and that cuts across so much of our everyday lives, you have enough material to write a book on any one subject.

Here are just a few nuggets:

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ECS’s Shelley Minteer has developed a fuel cell that can convert jet fuel to electricity at room temperature without igniting the fuel.
Credit: Dan Hixson/University of Utah College of Engineering

The Electrochemical Society’s Shelley Minteer and her team of engineers at The University of Utah have developed the first room-temperature fuel cell that uses enzymes to help jet fuel produce electricity without need to ignite the fuel.

The new fuel cells will be able to be used to power portable electronics, off-grid power, and sensors.

The study was published in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Catalysis with Minteer as the senior author.

“The major advance in this research is the ability to use Jet Propellant-8 directly in a fuel cell without having to remove sulfur impurities or operate at very high temperature,” says Minteer. “This work shows that JP-8 and probably others can be used as fuels for low-temperature fuel cells with the right catalysts.”

The standard technique for converting jet fuel to electricity is both difficult, due to the sulfur content, and inefficient, with only 30 percent of the fuel converted to electricity under the best conditions.

This from The University of Utah:

To overcome these constraints, the Utah researchers used JP-8 in an enzymatic fuel cell, which uses JP-8 for fuel and enzymes as catalysts. Enzymes are proteins that can act as catalysts by speeding up chemical reactions. These fuel cells can operate at room temperature and can tolerate sulfur.

Read the full article here.

Minteer is a valued member of ECS and is on the editorial board of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society and ECS Electrochemistry Letters – along with being a past chair of the Physical and Analytical Electrochemistry Division. You can also read her published research in our Digital Library.

Make sure to sign up for our e-Alerts so you don’t miss the newest, cutting-edge research!

Find openings in your area via the ECS job board.

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:

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Battery Manufacturing
Oak Ridge National Laboratory – Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Under general supervision, the postdoctoral research associate will be conducting research specifically in battery manufacturing R&D to lower cost, raise energy density, increase production yield, and address manufacturing bottlenecks. This incumbent will work in close collaboration with other researchers involved with ORNL’s applied energy storage program. This position resides in the Department of Energy (DOE) Battery Manufacturing Facility and the Manufacturing Systems Research Group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

Director at the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy Production (HI ERN)
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH – Jülich, Germany
We are seeking an internationally respected researcher in the field of electrocatalysis, who is capable of further developing in particular the material and process engineering principles of electrolytic water splitting at the highest scientific level. It is envisaged that research activities will be complementary to and interlinked with work at Jülich‘s Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK) with its sub-institutes involved in electrochemical, process engineering, and materials science research, and with research work at the Erlangen cluster of excellence Engineering of Advanced Materials.

Cancun was my second meeting. What I’ve noticed so far is how giving everyone is. Total strangers, some very important ones, have been more than willing to share their science or help me understand the inner-workings of the Society. The meetings feel like safe places where I can ask stupid questions and be vulnerable. Which, they say, is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. (After you’ve read the highlights, go watch Brene Brown’s TED Talk  on The Power of Vulnerability. She has the research!)

Over 2,000 people attended the 2014 ECS and SMEQ Joint International Meeting in Cancun, Mexico. This was ECS’s first return visit to Cancun since 2006. Participants could choose among 51 symposia and 2,299 presentations.

(Look for photos on Facebook.)

Electrochemical Energy and Water Summit

Brainstorming breakout session at the Electrochemical Water and Energy Summit

In its first “Science for Solving Society’s Problems Challenge,” ECS partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to leverage the brainpower of the many scientists in electrochemistry and solid state science and technology that regularly attend ECS meetings. The four grantees were identified during a multi-day workshop. Over 100 researchers were guided through a brainstorming and working group session with the theme of improving access to clean water and sanitation in developing countries. The winners:

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Find openings in your area via the ECS job board.

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:

Sr. Process Engineer
TriStaff Group – San Diego, California
As our Sr. Process Engineer, you will be responsible for the process development for advanced capacitive energy storage devices. This is a hands-on role, spending a significant amount of time in the lab doing work aimed at developing lab scale and pilot line processes for advanced electrodes and energy storage devices

Faculty Positions
Soochow University – Suzhou, China
Ten full professor or principal investigator (PI) and 20 associate professor positions are available at Institute of Energy of Soochow University. The Institute of Energy focuses on researches in areas related to science and technology of new energy.

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Brookhaven National Laboratory – Upton, New York
Essential duties and responsibilities include: development of lithium rechargeable cell technologies utilizing Sulfur based cathode materials, conduct basic research on multiple battery materials and electrochemical systems by utilizing various material and electrochemical characterization techniques, plan and execute research experiments in electrchemical call systems via material processing, study cell level component interactions, achieve mechanistic understanding and identify degradation mechanisms, and implement and create methods of diagnostic testing for battery characterization.