In an effort to expand South Australia’s renewable energy supply, the state has looked to business magnate Elon Musk to build the world’s largest lithium-ion battery. The goal of the project is to deliver a grid-scale battery with the ability to stabilize intermittency issues in the area as well as reduce energy prices.

An energy grid is the central component of energy generation and usage. By changing the type of energy that powers that grid in moving from fossil fuels toward more renewable sources, the grid itself changes. Traditional electrical grids demand consistency, using fossil fuels to control production for demand. However, renewable sources such as wind and solar provide intermittency issues that traditional fossil fuels do not. Researchers must look at how we can deliver energy to the electrical grid when the sun goes down or the wind stops blowing. This is where energy storage systems, such as batteries, play a pivotal role.

In South Australia, Musk’s battery is intended to sustain 100 megawatts of power and store that energy for 129 megawatt hours. To put it in perspective, that is enough energy to power 30,000 homes and, according to Musk, will be three times as powerful as the world’s current largest lithium-ion battery.

Musk hopes to complete the project by December, stating that “It’s a fundamental efficiency improvement to the power grid, and it’s really quite necessary and quite obvious considering a renewable energy future.”

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Around the world, the transportation sector is evolving. Globally, electric vehicle (EV) sales have more than doubled, showing a 72 percent increase in 2015, followed by 41 percent global increase in EV sales in 2016. Now, France is committing to a greener transportation sector by vowing to end the sale of gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2040, further pledging to become a carbon neutral country by 2050.

Currently, 95.2 percent of new car fleets in France are represented by gasoline and diesel vehicles. According to France’s Ecology Minister Nicolas Hulot, initiatives by automakers such as Volvo to go all electric in the coming years will help France start to phase out gasoline and diesel vehicles.

In order to become carbon neutral by 2050, France will also need to devote energy to ending the use of fossil fuels across the board, which includes ending hydrocarbon licenses in the country and stopping coal production by 2022.

While France’s goals are admirable, organizations such as Greenpeace believe that the measure falls short in terms of concrete measures.

“We are left wanting, on how these objectives will be achieved,” Greenpeace campaigner Cyrille Cormier said in a statement. “The goal to end the sale of gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2040 sends out a strong signal, but we would really like to know what are the first steps achieve this, and how to make this ambition something other than a disappointment.”

Scientists have created a nanoscale light detector that can convert light to energy, combining both a unique fabrication method and light-trapping structures.

In today’s increasingly powerful electronics, tiny materials are a must as manufacturers seek to increase performance without adding bulk. Smaller is also better for optoelectronic devices—like camera sensors or solar cells—which collect light and convert it to electrical energy.

Think, for example, about reducing the size and weight of a series of solar panels, producing a higher-quality photo in low lighting conditions, or even transmitting data more quickly.

However, two major challenges have stood in the way: First, shrinking the size of conventionally used “amorphous” thin-film materials also reduces their quality. And second, when ultrathin materials become too thin, they are almost transparent—and actually lose some ability to gather or absorb light.

The new nanoscale light detector, a single-crystalline germanium nanomembrane photodetector on a nanocavity substrate, could overcome both of these obstacles.

“We’ve created an exceptionally small and extraordinarily powerful device that converts light into energy,” says Qiaoqiang Gan, associate professor of electrical engineering in the University at Buffalo’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and one of the paper’s lead authors. “The potential applications are exciting because it could be used to produce everything from more efficient solar panels to more powerful optical fibers.”

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Instead of batteries, a new cell phone harvests the few microwatts of power it needs from a different source: ambient radio signals or light.

Researchers were also able to make Skype calls using the battery-free phone, demonstrating that the prototype—made of commercial, off-the-shelf components—can receive and transmit speech and communicate with a base station.

“We’ve built what we believe is the first functioning cell phone that consumes almost zero power,” says Shyam Gollakota, an associate professor of computer science & engineering at the University of Washington and coauthor of the paper.

“To achieve the really, really low power consumption that you need to run a phone by harvesting energy from the environment, we had to fundamentally rethink how these devices are designed.”

Researchers eliminated a power-hungry step in most modern cellular transmissions—converting analog signals that convey sound into digital data that a phone can understand. This process consumes so much energy that it’s been impossible to design a phone that can rely on ambient power sources.

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Nine new issues of ECS Transactions (ECST) have just been added to the ECS Online Store for pre-order. The following issues of ECST will be published from symposia held during the 232nd ECS Meeting in National Harbor, and will be available in limited quantities for pick-up at the meeting.

Electronic (PDF) editions will be made available for purchase beginning September 22, 2017. To pre-order a CD/USB edition, please follow the links below:

1. 1. Semiconductors, Dielectrics, and Metals for Nanoelectronics 15: In Memory of Samares Kar
2. 2. 15th International Symposium on Semiconductor Cleaning Science and Technology (SCST 15)
3. 3. Atomic Layer Deposition Applications 13
4. 4. Semiconductor Process Integration 10
5. 5. Thermoelectric and Thermal Interface Materials 3
6. 6. Low-Dimensional Nanoscale Electronic and Photonic Devices 10
7. 7. Gallium Nitride and Silicon Carbide Power Technologies 7
8. 8. Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells 17 (PEFC 17)
9. 9. Ionic and Mixed Conducting Ceramics 11 (IMCC 11)

Please be sure to place your order by September 1, 2017, to reserve your copy.

Questions? Contact ECST@electrochem.org for more information.

The 15th International Symposium on Solid Oxide Fuel Cells is being held in Hollywood, FL at the Diplomat Beach Resort from July 23-28, 2017. With almost 400 abstracts being presented across six days, this meeting is sure to have something of interest for everyone.

All participants are welcome to attend a special workshop  on SOFCs and their role in distributed power. The event will include talks by Microsoft, Cummins, University of California – Irvine, and Ceres Power on inherent synergies of SOFCs when embedded in data centers or other modular power applications. The talks will be followed by a panel discussion, giving audience members a chance to ask questions and share their ideas.

This workshop seeks to provide insight from the end-user perspective; i.e., what potential buyers/users of SOFCs envision as the opportunities and risks of the technology when embedded as an inherent part of the application, and what this approach means for the direction of the future SOFC development.

Discounted hotel rooms are still available.

The Diplomat Beach Resort ushers in a new era of oceanfront perfection in South Florida. Voted a Top Florida Resort by Conde Nast Traveler Readers in 2016, the hotel’s flair for the exceptional extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway. The resort features bright, beachy guest rooms, two sun-drenched pools, a glittering, ultramodern spa, plus 10 all-new restaurants.

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Event Information:
Cubicciotti Award and honorable mention ceremony
July 13, 2017
4:00 – 5:00 pm
Tan Kah Kee Hall Building, Room 180, UC Berkeley
Parking: Stadium parking garage, Hearst parking garage

The ECS San Francisco Section, and a jury of representatives from Apple, Bosch, and QuantumScape have selected the 2017 winner and honorable mention recipients of the Daniel Cubicciotti Student Award. Each application was reviewed to select the candidates whose personal characteristics best reflected Dan Cubicciotti’s commitment to academic excellence, integrity, and ‘joie de vivre.’ Research judgment focused on the quality of the work, which necessarily had an electrochemical component, the broader context in which it had been performed, and the insight achieved to this point. Extracurricular activities were given equal consideration in the application judgment.

After a full review of all the candidates, Tianyu Liu (UC Santa Cruz) was selected as the 2017 Cubicciotti winner. Honorable mentions were Colin Burke (UC, Berkeley) and Limei Chen (UC Santa Cruz). Congratulations to all three of our recipients!

Tianyu, Colin, and Limei will present their research at our Cubicciotti Award ceremony. Their abstracts and biographies can be found below.

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Scientists have created a durable catalyst for high-performance fuel cells by attaching single ruthenium atoms to graphene.

Catalysts that drive the oxygen reduction reaction that lets fuel cells turn chemical energy into electricity are usually made of platinum, which stands up to the acidic nature of the cell’s charge-carrying electrolyte. But platinum is expensive, and scientists have searched for decades for a suitable replacement.

The ruthenium-graphene combination may fit the bill, says chemist James Tour, a professor of computer science and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University, whose lab developed the material. In tests, its performance easily matched that of traditional platinum-based alloys and bested iron and nitrogen-doped graphene, another contender.

“Ruthenium is often a highly active catalyst when fixed between arrays of four nitrogen atoms, yet it is one-tenth the cost of traditional platinum,” Tour says. “And since we are using single atomic sites rather than small particles, there are no buried atoms that cannot react. All the atoms are available for reaction.”

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A team of researchers has created a new material that could be used in microscopic sensors, also known as microelectromechanical systems [MEMS], for devices that are part of the Internet of Things.

The technological future of everything from cars and jet engines to oil rigs, along with the gadgets, appliances, and public utilities comprising the Internet of Things will depend on these kinds of microscopic sensors. These sensors are mostly made of the material silicon, however, which has its limits.

“For a number of years we’ve been trying to make MEMS out of more complex materials” that are more resistant to damage and better at conducting heat and electricity, says materials scientist and mechanical engineer Kevin J. Hemker of Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering.

Most MEMS devices have internal structures that are smaller than the width of strand of human hair and are shaped out of silicon. These devices work well in average temperatures, but even modest amounts of heat—a couple hundred degrees—causes them to lose their strength and their ability to conduct electronic signals. Silicon is also very brittle and prone to break.

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Researchers from MIT have developed a new way to extract copper by separating the commercially valuable metal from sulfide minerals in one step without harmful byproducts. The goal of this new process is to simplify metal production, thereby eliminating harmful byproducts and driving down costs.

To achieve this result, the team used a process called molten electrolysis. Electrolysis is a common technique used to break apart compounds, often seen in water splitting to separate hydrogen from oxygen. The same process is also used in aluminum production and as a final step in copper production to remove any impurities. However, electrolysis in copper production is a multistep process that emits sulfur dioxide.

This from MIT:

Contrary to aluminum, however, there are no direct electrolytic decomposition processes for copper-containing sulfide minerals to produce liquid copper.

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