ECS’s Industrial Electrochemistry and Electrochemical Engineering Division (IE&EE) has presented two distinguished student awards to be accepted at the 227th ECS Meeting this May in Chicago, IL.

The IE&EE Student Achievement Award will be presented to Mohammad Mahdi Hasani-Sadrabadi of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Hasani-Sadrabadi is currently a graduate researcher studying bioengineering at Georgia Tech. Aside from his current studies, Hasani-Sadrabadi spent time at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, where he developed microfluidic platforms for controlled synthesis of polymeric nanoparticles. In 2007, he began his research on fuel cells while at Amirkabir University of Technology. He continued to establish the Biologically-Inspired Developing Advanced Research (BiDAR) group as an international collaborative research time. His main research area of interest is the development of bio-inspired nanomaterials for energy and biomedical applications. Take a peek at Hasani-Sadrabadi’s award address: “Anhydrous High-Proton Conductor Based on Ionic Nanopeapods.”

The IE&EE Student Achievement Award was established in 1989 to recognize promising young engineers and scientists in the field of electrochemical engineering and to encourage participants to initiate careers in this field. (more…)

When it comes to battery research and technology, people are constantly looking toward the lithium-ion battery to see the next big breakthrough. However, researchers at the chemical company BASF are showcasing and older battery type as a strong competitor against the li-ion.

BASF researchers are taking the nickel-metal hydride battery (NiMH) and giving it a boost to lead to cheaper electric cars. The assumption for electric car makers it that improvements in the lithium-ion battery will make cars cheaper and extend their driving range. While that may be true, the NiMH may also be able to do this with a little improvement.

The chemical company has already been able to double the amount of energy these old battery types can store, thus making them comparable to the lithium-ion. Researchers also state that there is still much room for improvement – with the potential to increase energy storage by an additional eight times.

Further, the batteries are set to cost roughly half as much as the cheapest lithium-ion battery.

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Brightman (left) and Hinds (right) have developed a novel electrode to boost green hydrogen research.
Image: National Physical Laboratory

ECS members Edward Brightman and Gareth Hinds of the National Physical Laboratory have developed a novel reference electrode that will aid in the development of hydrogen production technologies for renewable energy storage.

Both Brightman and Hinds will present their work on reference electrodes at the 227th ECS Meeting in Chicago this May. (Get an advanced look at that presentation here.)

Brightman and Hinds’ work deals with polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolysers (PEMWEs), which convert electricity and water into hydrogen and oxygen using two electrodes separated by a solid polymer electrolyte. While scientists have been looking and PEMWEs as a promising technology for some time now, researchers have been stifled in utilizing them due to the expensive catalyst materials needed and the general poor understanding of the degradation of these catalysts.

Now, Brightman and Hinds have tackled this issue by finding a way to produce PEMWEs with a cost-effective design and extended lifetime. This development allows for in situ measurement of the electrochemical process at the anode and the cathode.

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The newly developed silicon nanofiber structure allows the battery to be cycled hundreds of times without significant degradation.
Image: Nature Scientific Reports

Electric cars and personal electronics may get the battery boost they need with this new development in lithium-ion batteries.

Researchers from the University of California, Riverside have created silicon nanofibers that are 100 times thinner than human hair, which will provide the potential to boost the amount of energy that can be delivered per unit weight of the batteries.

The research has been detailed in the paper “Towards Scalable Binderless Electrodes: Carbon Coated Silicon Nanofiber Paper via Mg Reduction of Electrospun SiO₂ Nanofibers.”

This from University of California, Riverside:

The nanofibers were produced using a technique known as electrospinning, whereby 20,000 to 40,000 volts are applied between a rotating drum and a nozzle, which emits a solution composed mainly of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS), a chemical compound frequently used in the semiconductor industry. The nanofibers are then exposed to magnesium vapor to produce the sponge-like silicon fiber structure.

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ECS Short Courses are all day instruction designed to provide students or the seasoned professional an in-depth education on a wide range of topics.

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Three Short Courses will be offered on Sunday, May 24, 2015.

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Nanotechnology for Bioenergy: Biofuels to Fuel Cells
Instructor: Shelley D. Minteer

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Fundamentals of Electrochemistry – Basic Theory and Thermodynamic Methods
Instructor: Jamie Noël

Short Course #3
Scientific Writing for Scientists and Engineers
Instructor: Noel Buckley

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ECS Members: $425                                                                 ECS Student Members: $212.50
Nonmembers: $550                                                                   Nonmember Students: $275

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Pre-registration is required. Deadline is April 24, 2015.

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The new system aims to provide oxygen for long-duration space flights.
Image: University of Delaware

Neil deGrasse Tyson once said, “Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival.” Unfortunately, there are many factors that stifle human space exploration – one of which is the lack of oxygen.

How people will breathe is a constant concern among space missions. It’s impossible to shuttle oxygen tanks out and the air recycling systems are only about 50 percent efficient when it comes to recovering oxygen from carbon dioxide – but now a new development could mean easy breathing in space.

Research on a discovery from January 2014 is being expanded to develop silver electrocatalysts that may help enable long-term space travel. The original paper, “A selective and efficient electrocatalyst for carbon dioxide reduction,” detailed a development from scientists at the University of Delaware of a silver electrocatalyst that, due to its nanoscale structure, could convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide with 92 percent efficiency – freeing the oxygen in the process.

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The researchers are also investigating the textured graphene surfaces for 3D sensor applications.
Image: Nano Letters

The infamous wonder material is becoming even more wonderful with this new development from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

Scientist from UIUC have developed a novel process to transform flat graphene from 2D to 3D with a simple and commercially available single-step process. The process uses thermally activated shape-memory polymer substrates to texture the graphene and “crumple” it to give it an increased surface space.

With the easy of this process and the increased surface space of the material, there is a potential for electronics and biomaterials to advance at a much faster rate.

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Using a desktop computer, scientists can query the model about the thermodynamic properties needed to create the desired catalysts. They can use those parameters to inform experimentalists in their synthetic work.
Image: Accounts of Chemical Research

We’re one step closer to transitioning renewable energy sources from intermittent to sustainable with this new development from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Scientists are eliminating all of the unnecessary detours when dealing with molecular catalysts by elaborating on a strategy to map the catalytic route. With this strategy, researchers can modify just one part of a catalyst and see how that affects everything – including all the side reactions.

“We now know how catalysts with desired properties will behave in a given circumstance before we ever leave the computer. By working backwards, we can even ask which catalysts are the best performers for a set of conditions. We are on the verge of designing molecular electrocatalysts in silico — or conducting research by means of computer modeling,” said study co-leader, Dr. Simone Raugei.

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Prof. Sundaram has received degrees from the University of Kerala, Indian Institute of Science, and the Indian Institute of Technology.

Kalpathy B. Sundaram of the University of Central Florida will be awarded the 2015 Dielectric Science and Technology Division Thomas D. Callinan Award at the ECS 227th Meeting in Chicago this May.

This prestigious award was established by ECS in 1967 to encourage excellence in dielectrics and insulation investigations, as well as recognize outstanding research contributions in the field.

Prof. Sundaram will receive this award for showing excellence in his field through his research in thin film technology for low dielectric constant and high-k dielectric materials. Both academic and industrial researchers and engineers cite Prof. Sundaram’s contributions in solving fundamental problems with high-k materials.

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In honor of Alessandro Volta’s 270th birthday, Google is celebrating the man best known for inventing the first battery with today’s Google Doodle.

While Volta was a trained physicist, many consider him to be the first great electrochemist. By inventing the first battery, which he called the electric “pile”, he established the starting point of electrochemical science and technology with the first notable electrochemical storage device.

The turning point for Volta’s development of the battery came in 1780, when his collaborator Luigi Galvani discovered that the contact of two different metals with the muscle of a frog leg resulted in the generation of electric current.

Volta respectfully disagreed with Luigi’s theory that animal tissue was essential in the creation of electricity, arguing that the frog legs served only as an electroscope and further suggested that the true source of stimulation was the contact between dissimilar metals. With this theory, he began experimenting with metals alone in 1794.

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