ECS member and Ohio University professor, John Staser, was recently granted $1.5M from the U.S. Department of Energy for biofuels research. Staser and his team will work to develop technology to make biorefineries more efficient and profitable, thereby reducing the cost of environmentally friendly biofuels.

Biofuels are combustible fuels created from biomass. Currently, they are the only viable replacement to petroleum transportation fuels because they can be used in existing combustion engines. Biofuels are typically produced from food crops (sugar cane, corn, soybean, etc.) or materials such as wood, grass, or inedible parts of plants. Ethanol and biodiesel are prominent forms of biofuels that offer an alternative to such transportation fuels as petroleum and jet fuel.

Staser will lead an interdisciplinary team to develop ways to process a class of complex organic polymers known as lignin, which is one of the many waste products produced in the biorefining process.

“It’s not really competitive with gasoline, especially if oil is $40 a barrel,” Staser says. “Before this biofuel becomes feasible, we have to find a way to reduce the manufacturing cost. One way to do this is to come up with a secondary revenue stream for the refinery. So, if biorefineries could waste lignin to do so, biofuel would become a more financially feasible option.”

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Check out the PRiME 2016 award winners for best paper, best poster, and best presentation.

Saya Takeuchi
Best Oral Presentation Award
Challenges in Advanced Analytical Tools and Techniques for Batteries: A Symposium in Honor of Prof. Zempachi Ogumi
Focused Ion Beams for Lithiation of High Capacity Host Materials for Negative Electrodes

Jingshu Hui
Best Oral Presentation Award
Challenges in Advanced Analytical Tools and Techniques for Batteries: A Symposium in Honor of Prof. Zempachi Ogumi
Layer Number Dependence of Li+ Intercalation on Few-Layer Graphene and Electrochemical Imaging of Its Solid-Electrolyte Interphase Evolution

Munekazu Motoyama
Best Oral Presentation Award
Challenges in Advanced Analytical Tools and Techniques for Batteries: A Symposium in Honor of Prof. Zempachi Ogumi
In-Situ Scanning Electron Microscope Observations of Electrochemical Li Deposition and Dissolution at Lipon/Pt, Au Interfaces

Koji Kitada
Best Poster Presentation Award
Challenges in Advanced Analytical Tools and Techniques for Batteries: A Symposium in Honor of Prof. Zempachi Ogumi
Inhomogeneous-Lithiation/Homogeneous-Delithiation Occurring in the Composite Electrode at Continuous Cycling

Melike Baytekin-Gerngross
Best Student Talk Award
Pits & Pores 7: Nanomaterials – Fabrication Processes, Properties, and Applications
Chemical Sculpturing of Al Micro-Particles for Polymer Composites and Universal Polymer-Polymer Joints

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Global investments in renewable energy have continued to grow over the past five years, exceeding $329 billion in 2015. As technological solutions that drive down costs continue to emerge, more countries are adopting standards to encourage the growth of renewable energy. In the United States, Hawaii is looking to set the standard in clean, sustainable energy for the entire country.

During the October PRiME 2016 meeting in Honolulu, HI, policy makers and researchers from around the world came together for the 6th International ECS Electrochimical Energy Summit, focused on Recent Progress in Renewable Energy Generation, Distribution, and Storage.

“For us, it’s important that we continue to bring the opinion leaders as well as the leading scientists and researchers to Hawaii because we believe that we’re the center of a lot of important activity,” Mark Glick, summit moderator and Hawaii State Energy Office Administrator, tells ECS. “There’s nothing more exciting to demonstrate relevancy than to have the leading scientists in the world in the largest research conference of its kind come to Hawaii.”

One hundred percent renewable standard

Since 2008, Hawaii has been on the cutting-edge of the renewable energy industry in the United States. As oil prices rocketed from $74.44 to $102 a barrel (inflation adjusted), the state found itself in a unique position to commit to greater utilization of renewable energy sources.

“After the oil price shock, we decided we needed to change our course,” Glick says. “So we set forth a renewable portfolio standard. At that time, we aimed for 40 percent renewable energy by 2030. Since then, we’ve been so successful at getting ahead of the curve on that renewable portfolio standard.”

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Past ECS lecturer James Tour and his team at Rice University have developed a tiny three-wheeled, single-molecule call they’ve dubbed the “nanoroadster.”

This new research builds on Tour’s light-driven nanocars, which he developed six years ago. Since then, additional research efforts have allowed researchers to drive fleets of the nanoroadsters at once.

“It is exciting to see that motorized nanoroadsters can be propelled by their light-activated motors,” Tour says. “These three-wheelers are the first example of light-powered nanovehicles being observed to propel across a surface by any method, let alone by scanning tunneling microscopy.”

This from Rice University:

Rather than drive them chemically or with the tip of a tunneling microscope, as they will do with other vehicles in the upcoming international NanoCar Race in Toulouse, France, the researchers used light at specific wavelengths to move their nanoroadsters along a copper surface. The vehicles have rear-wheel molecular motors that rotate in one direction when light hits them. The rotation propels the vehicle much like a paddle wheel on water.

Read the full article.

“If we have to ‘wire’ the car to a power source, like an electron beam, we would lose a lot of the cars’ functionality,” Tour says. “Powering them with light frees them to be driven wherever one can shine a light—and eventually we hope they will carry cargo.”

The ability to activate multiple fleets of nanocars at once opens possibilities of using nanomachines like ants, in which they could work collectively to perform some construction.

By: John Besley, Michigan State University

Earlier this fall, the nonpartisan nonprofit ScienceDebate.org released Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s responses to a set of questions about science policy. Shortly after, a group of 375 scientists wrote an open letter focused specifically on the United States honoring commitments around climate change. Seventy Nobel laureates then penned a more general Clinton endorsement; President Obama had garnered similar numbers of Nobel winners’ support in the previous election cycles.

As someone who both studies science communication and thinks of himself as a part of the scientific community, I applaud scientists’ desire to engage with our broader society. The scientific community has substantial expertise to share and a responsibility to share it.

On the other hand, I worry that doing things like asking candidates to weigh in on scientific questions in the context of a “debate” may have unintended consequences that need to be thought through as a community.

None of the below should be taken as a rebuke. Rather, the point is to honestly consider whether the scientific community is making strategic communication choices when it comes to this election. Poor choices could give the dangerous impression that scientific questions can be debated like policy choices – while also cutting into the public’s overall trust in science.

What happens when scientists engage politically

I’m very hesitant to suggest that scientists bite their tongues about things such as the threat of a political candidate who doesn’t believe in climate change. But I also worry that the scientific community’s tendency to respond to many Republicans’ unhelpful views about science policy with continued feigned surprise, and occasional derision, might have negative consequences for the continued strong place of science in society.

As might have been predicted, the ScienceDebate.org efforts, for example, showed that one of the major party candidates has limited interest in reassuring the scientific community that its views are respected. The climate change open letter similarly reiterates that our best scientists know the Republican candidate for president doesn’t care what they think and find it (understandably) disheartening.

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The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has recently been in the headlines for safety concerns pertaining to its lithium-ion battery. Now, a lawsuit filed in California claims that the issues extend beyond the Note 7, and that many other generations of Samsung smartphones “pose a risk of overheating, fire, and explosion.”

While Samsung claims that the Li-ion safety issues are isolated to only the Note 7, researchers in the field of energy storage are still looking for a way to develop an efficient, non-combustible battery. CBS recently stopped by the University of Maryland to discuss just that with ECS member Erich Wachsman.

Watch the full CBS interview.

In an effort to build safer batteries, Wachsman and his group at the University of Maryland are focusing their research efforts on lithium conducting ceramic discs, which can handle thousands of degrees without any issues.

“Because it’s ceramic, it’s actually not flammable,” says Wachsman, director of the university’s Energy Research Center. “You cannot burn ceramic.”

(MORE: Listen to Wachsman discuss his work in water and sanitation.)

Since the rise of Li-ion battery safety in the news, Wachsman’s research has received more attention from industry. He and his group are currently working on scaling up the technology.

Last week, EV superpower Tesla announced its latest product: roof tiles with built-in solar cells. By merging technological performance with aesthetics, Tesla hopes to offer consumers solutions to make their homes more energy self-sufficient.

Using PV roofing material instead of traditional rooftop solar panels helps the company consolidate costs. According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, there are between four and five million new roofs constructed in the United States each year, which gives him a broad market.

Musk says that the roof tiles have the potential to integrate with Tesla’s Powerwall battery as well as the company’s electric cars, providing customers new, interconnected energy experiences. The CEO claims that roofs made from the new solar material would last up to three times as long as a typical 20-year-cycle roof and be more impact resistant.

However, critics of Tesla’s latest move highlight potential issues related to many different factors, including: location, energy storage capabilities, the practicality and cost of replacing a roof, and the difficulty in integrating PV technology into infrastructure. Tesla has not specified the technology behind their solar cells, but have claimed that they achieve 98 percent of the efficiency of traditional solar panels.

Researchers are shedding new light on cell biology with the development of a graphene sensor to monitor changes in the mitochondria.

The one-atom-thin layer of carbon sensor is giving researchers a new outlook into the process known as programmed cell death in mitochondria. The mitochondrion, which is found in most cells, has been known as the powerhouse of the cell due to its ability to metabolize and create energy for cells. However, the new researcher out of University of California, Irving shows that that convention wisdom on how cells create energy is only half right.

This from UC Irving:

[Peter] Burke and his colleagues tethered about 10,000 purified mitochondria, separated from their cells, to a graphene sensor via antibodies capable of recognizing a protein in their outer membranes. The graphene’s qualities allowed it to function as a dual-mode sensor; its exceptional electrical sensitivity let researchers gauge fluctuations in the acidity levels surrounding the mitochondria, while its optical transparency enabled the use of fluorescent dyes for the staining and visualization of voltage across the inner mitochondrial membranes.

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A team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego, led by ECS member Joseph Wang, recently developed new magnetic ink that can be used to make self-healing batteries, electrochemical sensors, and wearable, textile-based electrical circuits.

The ink is made up of microparticles set up in a certain configuration by a magnetic field. The particles on each respective side of the tear in a circuit are then attracted towards each other, resulting in the self-healing effect. The devices have the ability to repair tears as wide as 3 millimeters, which is a record in the field of self-healing systems.

“Our work holds considerable promise for widespread practical applications for long-lasting printed electronic devices,” Wang says.

While there are other self-healing materials in the field, they require an external trigger to start the process, which takes anywhere from a few min to days. The new work does not require any outside catalyst and works in 0.05 seconds

Deadline for Submitting Abstracts
Dec. 16, 2016
Submit today!

Topic Close-up #8

Symposium B02: Carbon Nanostructures in Medicine and Biology

Focused on the biomedical applications and biological interactions of carbon nanomaterials, including studies in toxicology, imaging, research tools, sensors, therapeutics, bioenergy, and theranostics.
FEATURING Mike McDevitt of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Ardemis Boghossian of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Rana Ghosh of Texas University, Markita Landry of Berkeley University.

Selected papers on the most promising bio-application of carbon nanostructures will be invited to talk from the submitted abstracts.