By: Gunnar W. Schade, Texas A&M University

Urban air pollution in the U.S. has been decreasing near continuously since the 1970s.

Federal regulations, notably the Clean Air Act passed by President Nixon, to reduce toxic air pollutants such as benzene, a hydrocarbon, and ozone, a strong oxidant, effectively lowered their abundance in ambient air with steady progress.

But about 10 years ago, the picture on air pollutants in the U.S. started to change. The “fracking boom” in several different parts of the nation led to a new source of hydrocarbons to the atmosphere, affecting abundances of both toxic benzene and ozone, including in areas that were not previously affected much by such air pollution.

As a result, in recent years there has been a spike of research to determine what the extent of emissions are from fracked oil and gas wells – called “unconventional” sources in the industry. While much discussion has surrounded methane emissions, a greenhouse gas, less attention has been paid to air toxics.

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Deadline: December 31, 2017

ECS recognizes outstanding technical achievements in electrochemistry and solid state science and technology through its honors and awards program. We are currently accepting nominations for the Canada Section Electrochemical Award, which was established in 1981 to recognize significant contributions to the advancement of electrochemistry in Canada. The recipient will be recognized for his/her achievements with a gold medal at the section’s 2018 annual meeting.

It has been a few years since we have conferred this award. The last recipient was David Shoesmith of Western Science University in 2010. In 2006, the award was presented to Jeff Dahn of Dalhousie University. Consider your fellow electrochemists and let’s find out whose next!

Please review the full award details carefully before completing the application. I encourage you to submit a nomination and acknowledge the hard work of your peers!

Scientists have learned how to tame the unruly electrons in graphene.

Graphene is a nano-thin layer of the carbon-based graphite in pencils. It is far stronger than steel and a great conductor. But when electrons move through it, they do so in straight lines and their high velocity does not change. “If they hit a barrier, they can’t turn back, so they have to go through it,” says Eva Y. Andrei, professor in the Rutgers University-New Brunswick department of physics and astronomy and the study’s senior author.

“People have been looking at how to control or tame these electrons.”

Graphene is a better conductor than copper and is very promising for electronic devices.

The new research “shows we can electrically control the electrons in graphene,” says Andrei. “In the past, we couldn’t do it. This is the reason people thought that one could not make devices like transistors that require switching with graphene, because their electrons run wild.”

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Extended Deadline for Nominations: November 15, 2017

ECS recognizes outstanding technical achievements in electrochemistry and solid state science and technology through its honors and awards program. We are currently accepting nominations for the Physical and Analytical Electrochemistry Division David C. Grahame Award, which was established in 1981 to encourage excellence in physical electrochemistry research and to stimulate publication of high quality research papers in an ECS journal. This award recognizes Society members who have made outstanding contributions to the field and enhanced the scientific stature of the Society by the presentation of well-recognized papers and at Society meetings.

In spring 2017, Viola Birss delivered “Nanoscale Templates and Scaffolds for Electrochemical Device Applications” as the most recent Grahame award recipient, joining a respected group of award-winning scientists.

The award consists of a framed certificate and a $1,500 prize. The recipient is required to attend the requisite Society meeting and present a symposium lecture that will be sponsored by PAED.

Please review the award rules carefully before completing the application.

Transparent solar materials on windows could gather as much energy as bulkier rooftop solar units, say researchers.

The authors of a new paper argue that widespread use of such highly transparent solar applications, together with the rooftop units, could nearly meet US electricity demand and drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels.

“Highly transparent solar cells represent the wave of the future for new solar applications,” says Richard Lunt, an associate professor of chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University. “We analyzed their potential and show that by harvesting only invisible light, these devices can provide a similar electricity-generation potential as rooftop solar while providing additional functionality to enhance the efficiency of buildings, automobiles, and mobile electronics.”

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By: Yanbo Qi, Taejin Jang, Venkatasailanathan Ramadesigan, Daniel T. Schwartz, and Venkat R. Subramanian

This article refers to a recently published open access paper in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society, “Is There a Benefit in Employing Graded Electrodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries?”

The contour plot for the resistance of a 2-layer graded cathode with different porosity combinations. Layer 1 is the layer near the separator, and layer 2 is near the current collector. The blue dot represents the point of minimum resistance (5.1164 Ω-cm²) for the 2-layer graded electrode. The diagonal line of ε₁ = ε₂ is equivalent to the single layer uniform case. The intersection point (5.3510 Ω-cm²) of the diagonal line with the contour is the optimal point for single layer design. The hatched area inside the contour represents the search space for 2-layer graded electrode design with resistance no bigger than the uniform optimal case. By introducing the 2-layer graded electrode structure, the feasible region changes from a point to a reasonably sized area. With the extra freedom in design, more objectives can be considered without resulting in an electrode with higher resistance.

Functionally graded materials have been widely developed in various fields, including the solid oxide fuel cells. However, its application in batteries is less common. Using simulation and optimization, both benefits and negligible improvement have been reported in the literature, depending on how the problem is formulated. The cases where people saw little impact by incorporating graded electrode design are cases where only one design objective, the energy density, is considered. While the cases where bigger improvement was reported are either compared to a base case as opposed to the best single layer case or considered with more than one design objectives.

In a recently published paper, we shared our opinion on this controversial topic. We applied two different optimization approaches to the secondary current distribution porous electrode model to confirm the optimal profiles acquired, and to facilitate the multi-objective optimizations later on. When looking at a single objective, minimizing the overall electrode resistance, and comparing with the optimal single layer case, only 4-6% modest reduction can be achieved. Therefore, we agree with the conclusion that for single objective optimization, graded structure does not make a big difference.

However, electrode design is not a simple matter where only one goal is desired. One of the powerful features of battery modeling is that it can give us insights on battery’s internal status, which is difficult to get otherwise. In our paper, we minimized the value and distribution of activation overpotential inside the electrode along with the overall resistance. What we discovered is that even though doing graded electrode cannot reduce the overall resistance much, with the extra design freedom in porosity distribution, the search space increased dramatically in the 2-layer graded electrode case compared to the single uniform layer case. The extra design space is very important in multi-objective optimization, allowing us to take into account other design considerations, including controlling the internal status. We believe that the value of graded electrode lies in the enlarged search space for additional design considerations, not just the improvement in a single objective.

Aligned with ECS’s commitment to Free the Science, we also believe that open access facilitates collaboration and speeds up scientific advancement. We have developed a free electrode design tool on our website (http://depts.washington.edu/maple/Design.html). This open access executable code is readily runnable on any Windows computer without extra software requirement. The tool allows users to change model parameters, thus can accommodate any electrode chemistry. Detailed explanation and instructions can be found on the webpage. We hope that this tool can help the community to achieve better battery performance.

ECS is once again participating in International Open Access Week. It begins on Monday, October 23 and for the week you’ll be able to read and download anything in the ECS Digital Library at no charge. That’s over 132,000 articles and abstracts.

ECS proud to participate in Open Access Week as part of its commitment to Free the Science, an initiative to move toward a future that embraces open science to further advance research in our fields. This is a long-term vision for transformative change in the traditional models of communicating scholarly research. Being open means better collaboration, more impact, and faster progress.

Let your friends and colleagues know what ECS is doing so they too can take advantage of our free research! Discover information in fields like energy technology, communications, transportation, human health and welfare, and the general sustainability of our planet.

PS: If you like what ECS is doing to promote more openness in research communications, please consider supporting Free the Science. Your gift, no matter the size, will help ECS build an example for the world. Donate now!

By: Jane A. Flegal, University of California, Berkeley and Andrew Maynard, Arizona State University

Hollywood’s latest disaster flick, “Geostorm,” is premised on the idea that humans have figured out how to control the Earth’s climate. A powerful satellite-based technology allows users to fine-tune the weather, overcoming the ravages of climate change. Everyone, everywhere can quite literally “have a nice day,” until – spoiler alert! – things do not go as planned.

Admittedly, the movie is a fantasy set in a deeply unrealistic near-future. But coming on the heels of one of the most extreme hurricane seasons in recent history, it’s tempting to imagine a world where we could regulate the weather. Despite a long history of interest in weather modification, controlling the climate is, to be frank, unattainable with current technology. But underneath the frippery of “Geostorm,” is there a valid message about the promises and perils of planetary management?

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In a recently conducted survey of corresponding authors, ECS found that 58.3% of the 132 responders had registered for an ORCID iD. Over 31% had not registered, and 10.6% were not sure if they registered; of these individuals, 49% did not know about ORCID.

ECS believes all researchers should be aware of the benefits of registering for an ORCID iD—a free, persistent digital identifier which allows for automated linkages between you, your publications, and your professional enterprises.

Why should you register? Your ORCID iD:

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