Building a sustainable future

Image: NASA

Over 40 years ago, the modern environmental movement was born. Passion and concern drove a small group of twenty-somethings together in a rallying cry to create a more environment-conscious society, establishing what has become known as Earth Day.

The original Earth Day focused on the issues of pollution, but today’s modern Earth Day focuses the pressing global issue of climate change.

Global challenges

Currently, carbon dioxide levels in the air are at their highest in over 650,000 years, the global temperature has risen 1.4°F since 1880, and the sea level nearly 7” over the past 100 years.

While a few people and politicians may sill dismiss climate change, around 200 worldwide scientific organizations now formally hold the position that climate change has been caused by human action. Additionally, nearly 170 countries are preparing to sign the Paris Climate Agreement today, which will put global plans into motion in an effort to tackle the issue of rising temperatures.

The science of renewable energy

Here at ECS, we believe the path to stopping climate change and tackling these issues that are devastating the environment begins with science.

With population growth and industrialization, global energy needs continue to grow. Economic, political, and environmental issues are largely dictated by energy needs.

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Nanostructures on the surface of the fabric.
Image: Queensland University of Technology

Oil spills have had an extensive history of disrupting the environment, killing ecosystems, and displacing families. Impacts of massive oil spills are still felt in many parts of the world, including the undersea spill at the BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that dumped an approximate 39 million gallons of oil into the gulf.

But what if these devastating oil spills could be easily cleaned up with a piece of fabric rooted in electrochemistry?

That may be a reality soon thanks to researchers at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). According to a release, the QUT researchers have developed a multipurpose fabric covered with semi-conducting nanostructures that can both mop up oil and degrade organic matter when exposed to light.

(READ: “Superhydrophobic Fabrics for Oil/Water Separation Based on the Metal-Organic Charge-Transfer Complex CuTCNAQ“)

The fabric, which repels water and attracts oil, has already has promising preliminary results. In the early stages of research, the scientists have already been able to mop up crude oil from the surface of both fresh and salt water.

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Researchers Phil Baran (left) and Evan Horn pose in front on an electric car, showcasing how the principals of sustainable transportation pertain to sustainable chemistry in the new allylic oxidation reaction.
Image: The Scripps Research Institute

Researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed a new technique that has the potential to boost a traditional chemical reaction, opening doors for new developments in pharmaceuticals and other industries.

The researchers developed an easier, cheaper, and greener way to preform allylic oxidation – a process that typically employs toxic or expensive reagents and has previously been difficult, if not impossible, to implement on a large scale. By using the power of old-fashioned electrochemistry, the TSRI researchers discovered a way to make the process scalable through the use of safe chemicals.

(READ: “Scalable and sustainable electrochemical allylic C-H oxidation“)

“Turns out one of the best reagents you can buy is sitting in your wall socket,” said principal investigator Phil Baran. “The scope of the reaction is just phenomenal. It’s super easy to do, and the overall improvement in environmental sustainability is dramatic.”

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On Friday, May 6, 2016, the ECS New England section will host a meeting featuring a distinguished speaker at Northeastern University, and you’re invited!

What’s more, this event is free to attend! So come on out to Boston for a night, engage with your peers in the ECS community, and learn about redox flow batteries from an expert in the field of electrochemistry!

Location

Northeastern University
Boston, Massachusetts
Egan Research Building
Room 306
Directions

Schedule

6:00 p.m. | Welcome & Election of Section Officers
7:00 p.m. | Invited Talk | Dr. Ertan Agar, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell

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Are you a current or prospective ECS member interested in long-term membership within our thriving community? If so, then multi-year membership may be for you!

ECS offers different membership plans to meet the needs of individuals in academica, industry, and government. The multi-year membership option is designed to accommodate your personalized needs. For your convenience, the multi-year membership option allows you to choose to become an ECS member for 2 years, 3 years, or 5 years.

What’s more, all three of these options will result in savings!

See the table below for multi-year membership pricing.

As a multi-year member, you will receive all of the benefits of ECS membership, including 100 free full-text downloads from the ECS Digital Library, discounts on meeting registrations, unlimited electronic access to ECS meeting abstracts, and a subscription to Interface.

Make a lasting commitment to the ECS and stop worrying about renewing your membership every single year. Become a multi-year member today!

Questions? Contact customerservice@electrochem.org.

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2016 ECS Summer Fellowships!

Offered since 1928, the summer fellowship program is designed to assist students during the summer months, June through September, in the pursuit of work in a field of interest to the ECS.

Fellowship Recipients

Dr. Yelena Gorlin
Technische Universität München
Supervisor, Dr. Hubert A. Gasteiger
Colin Garfield Fink Summer Fellowship*

Soo Kim
Northwestern University
Advisor, Dr. Christopher M. Wolverton
Edward G. Weston Summer Fellowship

Charuksha T. Walgama
Oklahoma State University
Advisor, Dr. Sadagopan Krishnan
Joseph W. Richards Summer Fellowship

Muhammad Boota
Drexel University
Advisor, Dr. Yury Gogotsi
F. M. Becket Summer Fellowship

Michael Metzger
Technische Universität München
Advisor, Dr. Hubert A. Gasteiger
Herbert H. Uhlig Summer Fellowship

*The Colin Garfield Fink Summer Fellowship Award is designed to assist a postdoctoral scientist or engineer in the pursuit of battery research during the summer months.

Look for more information in November 2016 for your chance to apply for one of these prestigious fellowships in 2017!

Interested in other ECS opportunities like these? Click here to learn about additional ECS programs!

In early December of 2015, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) penned what he deemed the “Wastebook” – a report detailing what the senator believes to be wasteful federal spending, specifically targeted at research dollars.

The report took aim at research the fiscal conservative considered a waste of federal cash, including projects he summed up as a “shrimp fight club,” a study of cows in China, an exploration of why obese women can’t get dates, and a look at shrimp on a treadmill.

Earlier this month, those very same scientists that Flake criticized and reduced their research to mere waste took to Pennsylvania Avenue to reinforce the legitimacy of their work.

Researchers respond

“I am rock solid about my research. I know it is very good,” said Sheila Patek, an associate professor of biology at Duke University who led the so-called shrimp fight club study. “But this ‘Wastebook’ targeted a short paper that was the first paper in my young graduate student’s career. He is from a long line of firefighters. His father, his uncle, his grandfather. There aren’t any other scientists in his family. They are very proud of him. He is extremely civic-minded. I don’t think I’ve had anyone in my lab like that. And this has been crushing for him.”

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There may soon be a shift in the transportation sector, where traditional fossil fuel-powered vehicles become a thing of the past and electric vehicles start on their rise to dominance.

In fact, we may be seeing that shift already. Last year, battery prices fell 35 percent, which contributed to the 60 percent increase in sales of electric vehicles. If that growth continues along the same path, electric vehicles have the potential to displace oil demand of two million barrels a day as early as 2023.

The key technology at the heart of these vehicles is energy storage. Whether it be the lithium-ion, lithium-air, or fuel cells – electric vehicles depend on affordable, highly efficient electrochemical energy storage to operate.

But what if the future of these vehicles depend on a different type of energy technology?

Saturday Night Live recently made a play on the future of electric vehicles by imagining a world where cars didn’t run off of a singular, efficient battery — but rather tons of AA batteries.

Check out what a car powered entirely out of AA batteries could look like.

Michael Shur will be awarded the 2016 ECS Electronics and Photonics Division Award at the 229th ECS Meeting in San Diego, CA, May 29-June 2, 2016.

Michael Shur has received degrees from St. Petersburg Electrochemical University and the A. F. Ioffe Institute. Currently, he is the Patricia W. and C. Roberts Professor of Solid State Electronics and the Director of the Broadband Center at the Rensselar Polytechnic Institute. Additionally, Shur is the co-founder and vice president of SET, Inc.

Shur is an ECS Fellow and has been named a Fellow of many other scientific societies, including IEEE, OSA, SPIE, IET, APS, WIF, MRS, and AAAS.

(MORE: Read his award address abstract entitled, “High Power Nitride Based Field Effect Transistors.”)

His many honors and recognitions include the Tibbetts Award for technology commercialization, IEEE Donald Fink Award, IEEE Kirchmayer Award, Gold Medal of Russian Education Ministry, RPI Research Award, and many more. Shur is also a foreign member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.

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Michael Faraday may have suggested that the formula for scientific success is “work, finish, publish,” but Faraday said that back in the 19th century. In 2016, there are plenty of compelling reasons to tack another item onto the end of the list. Millions of scientific articles are published each year, making your work just a drop in the ocean (and we have authors who do a lot of work). In order to ensure that your work is read, cited, and has impact, it’s becoming increasingly necessary to add a little self-promotion to your workflow.

To help you get started we have a few suggestions – here are ECS’s top 5 tips to maximize impact and promote your published research.

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