This article was originally published in the winter 2017 issue of Interface.

Tech Highlights was prepared by David Enos and Mike Kelly of Sandia National Laboratories, Colm Glynn and David McNulty of University College Cork, Ireland, Zenghe Liu of Verily Life Science, and Donald Pile of Rolled-Ribbon Battery Company. Each article highlighted here is available free online.

Mechanical Pre-Lithiation of Silicon Anodes for Lithium Ion Batteries

Low Initial Coulombic Efficiency (ICE) continues to be a significant issue for the practical use of alloying materials, such as Si and Ge, as anodes and particularly for their implementation in full Li-ion cells. It is imperative to develop methods to improve ICE to mitigate issues associated with the consumption of electrolyte and the loss of Li during initial cycling. Several methods
to improve ICE have been examined, including studying the effects of active material particle size and the use of various electrolyte additives such as vinylene carbonate. The prelithiation of anode materials has also been investigated using two different approaches—electrochemical and mechanical prelithiation. Researchers from the University of Tottori have reported on the formation of a crystalline Li-Si alloy phase via a mechanical alloying (MA) method. Read the full article.

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Over 1,840 articles were published in ECS journals in 2017, ranging from battery technology to materials science. Among those articles, “The Development and Future of Lithium Ion Batteries” by ECS member of 48 years, George E. Blomgren, stood out as the most downloaded paper of the year, with over 25,000 downloads in total.

The open access paper was published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES) and has held the number one top download spot for the majority of the year. In November 2017 alone, it hit a record-setting 4,080 downloads. Blomgren credited the paper’s outstanding success to the continued surging interest in lithium-ion batteries, a technology that has made its profound mark on consumer electronics such as cellphones and computers, and continues to be applied to emerging innovations ranging from large scale energy storage to electric vehicles.

The paper, which highlights the past, present, and future of battery science and technology, was published as part of the JES Focus Issue of Selected Papers from IMLB 2016 with Invited Papers Celebrating 25 Years of Lithium Ion Batteries. The focus issue contains contributions from veteran scientists considered by many to be founding fathers in lithium battery science, including Emanuel Peled, Tetsuya Osaka, Zempachi Ogumi, Jeff Dahn, Robert Huggins, and of course, Blomgren.

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The Glenn E. Stoner Collection, which contains 17 articles Stoner published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society, is available to read for free in the ECS Digital Library.

This sponsored collection was generously supported by Stoner’s former students, friends, and colleagues to honor the significant contributions that he made to electrochemistry and teaching.

Original plans for the collection arose during a conversation between Pat Moran, professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and member of the Free the Science Advisory Board, and E. J. Taylor, ECS treasurer and cochair of the Free the Science Advisory Board.

While the two were discussing the importance of the Free the Science initiative to the future of ECS, Moran proposed that they establish a collection in honor of their graduate advisor, Glenn E. Stoner.

A cohort of former classmates from the University of Virginia, including Paul Natishan and UVA professor Rob Kelly, took things from there, reaching out to friends, colleagues, and companies influenced by Stoner’s teaching and work.

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ECS Transactions 80(10) “Selected Proceedings from the 232nd ECS Meeting: National Harbor, MD – Fall 2017,” has just been published.

This issue contains a total of 149 papers from the following National Harbor symposia:

A01 – Battery and Energy Technology Joint General Session

A02 – Battery Characterization: Symposium in Honor of Frank McLarnon

A03 – Battery Student Slam 2

A04 – Li-Ion Batteries

A05 – Battery Materials: Beyond Li-Ion

A06 – Advanced Manufacturing Methods for Energy Storage Devices

B01 – Carbon Nanostructures: From Fundamental Studies to Applications and Devices

C01 – Corrosion General Session

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The following are the updated guidelines for submitting student chapter updates for publication in Interface.

ECS encourages submissions of news from student chapters. Therefore, we try to keep the rules to a minimum. However, some guidance will help in preparing the material.

Point of View: Compose your submission in third person.

Timeliness: Interface is published every three months – spring, summer, fall, and winter. It is best that your chapter update includes information about events, initiatives, accomplishments, etc., from within the last three to six months.

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Earlier this year, a group in the ECS Corrosion Division mobilized a push to honor the work and memory of the late Hugh Isaacs, who passed away on December 5, 2016. Isaacs had been an ECS member since 1967 and is recognized as an ECS fellow.

The group unified donors among Isaacs’s family, friends, and colleagues in an effort to commemorate all he contributed as an impassioned champion of electrochemical science and engineering, and as a preeminent figure in the corrosion community. Isaacs’s widow, Sheila Isaacs, contributed an anchor gift that helped make their endeavor possible.

Their work culminated in the creation of the Hugh Isaacs Collection, a sponsored collection containing all 45 of the articles Isaacs published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. The collection is currently available in the ECS Digital Library. Read now!

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The content below was published in the winter 2017 edition of Interface.

Each year ECS gives up to five Summer Fellowships to assist students in continuing their graduate work during the summer months in a field of interest to the Society.

Congratulations to the four Summer Fellowship recipients for 2017. The Society thanks the Summer Fellowship Committee for their work in reviewing the applications and selecting four excellent recipients.

2017 Edward G. Weston Summer Research Fellowship

Mapping Nanoscale Ion Transport
Lushan Zhou

Transport of ions at small length scales plays critical roles in almost all physical and biophysical processes. Investigation of local ion transport properties requires tools for direct visualization of spatially distributed ions at interfaces. Scanning ion conductance microscopy (SICM), a scanned nanoscale pipette, allows high resolution non-contact topography
imaging of samples bathed in electrolyte and therefore is well-suited for nanoscale ion transport studies. Read more.

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A new issue of ECS Transactions (ECST) has just been published. This issue incorporates 42 papers presented at the 18th International Conference on Advanced Batteries, Accumulators and Fuel Cells (ABAF 2017). This conference was held in Brno, Czech Republic, September 10-13, 2017.

ECST Volume 81, Issue 1 is now available in the ECS Digital Library. This issue is also available for purchase as an electronic (PDF) edition through the ECS Online Store.

Below is an excerpt from an article published in the winter 2017 edition of Interface.

By: Durga Misra, New Jersey Institute of Technology

The explosive progress of information technology and 5th generation communication technology enables the introduction of the Internet of Things, where the network of physical objects—devices, vehicles, and buildings embedded with sensors, electronics, software, and network connectivity—permits these physical objects to collect and exchange data. The use of dielectric materials in sensors for a multitude of applications such as self-driving cars has made the dielectric science and technology research even more significant than before.

More than seventy years ago, in 1945, it all started with establishing the Electric Insulation Division in ECS to offer an interdisciplinary forum to discuss the science of the materials used for electrical insulation in power transmission. With the advancement of technology, when integrated circuits became popular, the division became the Dielectrics and Insulation Division in 1965. In 1990, it became the Dielectric Science and Technology Division due to extensive growth in electronic manufacturing technology. Today, the division still provides a strong interdisciplinary research environment.

In this issue of Interface we have focused on some of the current topics that are an integral part of current and future technologies.

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By: Brian Nosek, Center for Open Science

In the Fall of 2011, Sarah Mackenzie, the maid of honor at my wedding, was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer. Sarah and her family were motivated to learn as much as they could about the disease to advocate for her care. They weren’t scientists, but they started searching the literature for relevant articles. One evening, Sarah called us, angry. Every time she found an article that might be relevant to understanding her disease, she ran into a paywall requiring $15-$40 to access it. Public money had paid for the research, yet she was barred from making any use of it. Luckily, she had us. Most people in Sarah’s position don’t have the luxury of friends at wealthy academic institutions with subscriptions to the literature.

During this time, I was pursuing an interest in the business models of scholarly communication. I wanted to understand the ways in which these models interfered with the dissemination of knowledge that could improve quality of life. Sarah’s experience illustrated one key part of the problem–the outcomes of research should be public goods, but the business models of publishing make them exclusive goods. Lack of access to published literature limits our ability to apply what we know to improving others’ quality of life. If doctors can’t access the literature, they can’t keep up with the latest innovations for care. If policy makers can’t access the literature, they can’t create evidence based policies. To advance solutions and cures, the outcomes of research must be open.

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