This special issue of the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology focuses on defect characterization in semiconductor materials and devices. We especially welcome papers in the following domains:

• Structural, chemical, electrical and optical characterization of extended defects in semiconductor nano-structures and materials
• Electrical and optical characterization of point defects in semiconductor nano-structures
• Semiconductor-device-based defect analysis
• Impact of (extended) defects on device and circuit operation and yield
• Defect characterization and control in hetero-epitaxial layers and nano-structures grown on Si, comprising Ge, SiGe, GeSn, III-V and III-nitrides
• Ab initio calculations and TCAD of the electrical activity of (extended) defects in semiconductor materials and devices
• Defect control and mitigation strategies during hetero-epitaxial deposition

Find out more!

Submission Deadline | Oct. 21, 2015
Papers accepted into this focus issue are published online within 10 days of acceptance.
The issue is created online an article at a time with the final article published in March 2016.

ECS publishes special or “focus” issues in order to highlight scientific and technological areas of current interest and future promise that are expanding rapidly or have taken a new direction.

The editors of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES) and the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology (JSS) are calling for papers for these upcoming focus issues:

Defect Characterization in Semiconductor Materials and Devices
Submission Deadline: October 21, 2015
In recent years, a rapidly growing interest and concern have developed within the microelectronics industry and research community with respect to defect characterization in hetero-epitaxial layers and nano-structures for CMOS and photonic applications. Read more.

Honoring Allen J. Bard
Submission Deadline: September 30, 2015
ECS welcomes original research contributions to a special issue of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society honoring Allen J. Bard. Prof. Bard has been a pioneer of modern electrochemistry for over 60 years and a long-standing member of the Society. For his 80th birthday, The Electrochemical Society founded the Allen J. Bard Award in 2013 to honor his extensive contributions to the field of electrochemistry; the first award was given in May 2015. Read more.

Logan Streu, ECS Content Associate & Assistant to the CCO, recently came across a video from The Scholarly Kitchen explaining how ORCID works (with dolls as visual aids).

Learn more about ORCID! Check out Logan’s articles on the benefits of ORCID identifiers:

• “Have You Registered for Your ORCID ID Yet?“
• “ORCID Brings Author Level Metrics to the Table“

Find out more about signing-up for ORCID!

With the use of technical terms and complex formals, scientific journal articles are typically a difficult read for the non-expert. However, sometimes scientists themselves also have a difficult time wading through the highly complicated terms in these studies.

A new analysis of 140,000 scientific papers has recently been released, suggesting that studies with shorter titles are more often cited than those with long titles. The reason? Papers with shorter titles may be generally more concise and easier to comprehend.

The analysis began by looking at 20,000 of the most highly cited scientific papers published from 2007 to 2010. Each year consistently showed that papers with shorter titles received more attention.

This from Popular Science:

The situation gets more complicated, though, when you take journal rankings into account. Papers published in more prestigious journals tend to get more citations. Once the authors controlled for that factor, the correlation between shorter titles and higher citations only held up for the years 2007 to 2010. But the results do show that, overall, journals that publish papers with shorter titles tend to receive more citations per paper.

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Check out what’s trending in electrochemical and solid state technology! Read some of the most exciting and innovative papers that have been recently published in ECS’s journals.

The articles highlighted below are free! Follow the links to get the full-text version.

Development of Hybrid Electro-Electroless Deposit (HEED) Coatings and Applications
Electrodeposition can be achieved via electroplating, whereby current is applied to the work piece serving as the cathode, or by using an electroless deposition process, wherein the reductant is a co-dissolved species in the plating solution. Researchers in Canada have developed a combined deposition process, termed hybrid electro-electroless deposition (HEED) to deposit two metals. Read the rest.

“Time of Flight” Electrochemistry
Measurement of molecular diffusion coefficients is important in understanding and determining the kinetics of physical and chemical processes. Among the measurement techniques employed are those based on pulsed field gradient nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, field flow fractionation, and electrochemistry. Read the rest.

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Logan Streu, ECS Content Associate & Assistant to the CCO, recently came across a video that takes a close (albeit funny) look at the misleading or misused words frequently used in scientific research.

Is “scientific proof” an oxymoron? Is there really a gene for everything? Check out the video below to see some of the phrases that are often misused.

Want more science videos? Check out our YouTube channel!

ECS is excited to announce a Book Sale, running now through Monday, September 7, 2015!

All in-stock Proceedings Volumes and many older issues of ECS Transactions are now on sale for the one-time price of $25 per title, plus shipping and handling.

This sale is for all in-stock Proceedings Volumes and for all in-stock, hard-copy issues of ECST that were published from 2005 through 2010. With almost 300 discounted titles, this is a clearance sale not to be missed!

Please see the linked PDF for available titles and instructions on ordering or go directly to the ECS Bookstore.

Quantities are very limited, so order today and save!

Also, please visit the Chicago page for the newest issues of ECST!

A new issue of ECS Transactions has just been published. Get Volume 68, Issues 1 of ECST Glasgow here. The ECS Conference on Electrochemical Energy Conversion & Storage with SOFC-XIV will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, on July 26-31, 2015.

Additional issues of ECST from this conference will be published in the coming weeks.

Learn more about our conference in Glasgow and find out more about ECST.

Back in March, I wrote a post gushing about the utility of ORCID identifiers. For those of you who haven’t seen it you can find it here, and for those of you who have seen it, but have yet to sign up, it’s probably time to think about it!

Because everyone likes lists, here’s ECS’s top 5 reasons to register for your ORCID ID today:

1. Differentiate yourself.
Think about how many “J. Smith”s there are in the world. ORCID lets you stand out from the crowd and ensures that your research is appropriately attributed.

2. Names change, affiliations change, e-mail accounts change.
There is little about an individual’s research profile that is static – people find new jobs, change names, or just switch from Outlook to Gmail. No matter what the change is, your professional contacts will be able to find your current information—even if they’re reaching out to you about a paper you wrote four jobs ago or in grad school.

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Electronic and Photonic Devices and Systems Technical Editor
for
ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology and ECS Solid State Letters

ECS (The Electrochemical Society) is seeking to fill the position of Technical Editor of the Electronic and Photonic Devices and Systems Technical Interest Area for the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology and ECS Solid State Letters.

The Electronic and Photonic Devices and Systems (EPDS) Technical Interest Area (TIA) includes fundamental properties and measurements of device fabrication and characteristics for electronic and photonic applications. Specific topics include thin film transistors; MOSFETs; bipolar devices; quantum devices; silicon, germanium, and related microelectronic and photonic devices; micro- and nano-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS); solid state sensors; wide bandgap semiconductor materials and devices; photovoltaic energy conversion devices; phase change memories; graphene-based devices; plasmonics; power devices; silicon-on-insulator devices; and bioelectronics. Learn more.