Alyssa Doyle, ECS membership intern

My name is Alyssa Doyle, and I had the privilege of interning with The Electrochemical Society’s Membership Services Department for a semester. When I first began my internship in August of 2017, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. I wasn’t all that familiar with nonprofit operations, and as a junior English major at The College of New Jersey, I knew practically nothing about electrochemistry. I’m going to be honest—I was quite nervous, but I was also incredibly excited by the prospect of acquiring knowledge about an entirely new subject.

From the moment I arrived, I was quickly immersed in ECS’s mission and culture. I learned a lot about ECS’s Free the Science campaign, and as a student who is interested in publishing, I was intrigued by the possibility of open access. When I first heard about the initiative, I deeply admired ECS for their desire to provide free research to people across the world with the hopes of increasing the sustainability of the planet—I still do, but now even more so.

Throughout my internship, I worked on various rewarding, engaging, and meaningful projects—there’s no getting coffee here. Instead, I had the chance to write blog posts about award winners and upcoming ECS meetings and events, and I was able to participate in the preparation for the 232nd ECS Meeting in National Harbor by completing mini projects, such as creating volunteer schedules, confirming registrants, and writing bios for speakers. I also had the opportunity to work on longer projects as well by maintaining contact with ECS’s 67 student chapters and creating a list of prospective employers to reach out to about ECS’s Career Expo. Even within the last week at my internship, I put together a timeline of the Edward Acheson Award and had the chance to read through Transactions of the American Electrochemical Society from 1903 onward. Each project was incredibly fascinating, and I started each day ready to tackle a new task.

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ECS Transactions 80(10) “Selected Proceedings from the 232nd ECS Meeting: National Harbor, MD – Fall 2017,” has just been published.

This issue contains a total of 149 papers from the following National Harbor symposia:

A01 – Battery and Energy Technology Joint General Session

A02 – Battery Characterization: Symposium in Honor of Frank McLarnon

A03 – Battery Student Slam 2

A04 – Li-Ion Batteries

A05 – Battery Materials: Beyond Li-Ion

A06 – Advanced Manufacturing Methods for Energy Storage Devices

B01 – Carbon Nanostructures: From Fundamental Studies to Applications and Devices

C01 – Corrosion General Session

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A new issue of ECS Transactions (ECST) has just been published. This issue incorporates 42 papers presented at the 18th International Conference on Advanced Batteries, Accumulators and Fuel Cells (ABAF 2017). This conference was held in Brno, Czech Republic, September 10-13, 2017.

ECST Volume 81, Issue 1 is now available in the ECS Digital Library. This issue is also available for purchase as an electronic (PDF) edition through the ECS Online Store.

Below is an excerpt from an article published in the winter 2017 edition of Interface.

By: Durga Misra, New Jersey Institute of Technology

The explosive progress of information technology and 5th generation communication technology enables the introduction of the Internet of Things, where the network of physical objects—devices, vehicles, and buildings embedded with sensors, electronics, software, and network connectivity—permits these physical objects to collect and exchange data. The use of dielectric materials in sensors for a multitude of applications such as self-driving cars has made the dielectric science and technology research even more significant than before.

More than seventy years ago, in 1945, it all started with establishing the Electric Insulation Division in ECS to offer an interdisciplinary forum to discuss the science of the materials used for electrical insulation in power transmission. With the advancement of technology, when integrated circuits became popular, the division became the Dielectrics and Insulation Division in 1965. In 1990, it became the Dielectric Science and Technology Division due to extensive growth in electronic manufacturing technology. Today, the division still provides a strong interdisciplinary research environment.

In this issue of Interface we have focused on some of the current topics that are an integral part of current and future technologies.

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By: Brian Nosek, Center for Open Science

In the Fall of 2011, Sarah Mackenzie, the maid of honor at my wedding, was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer. Sarah and her family were motivated to learn as much as they could about the disease to advocate for her care. They weren’t scientists, but they started searching the literature for relevant articles. One evening, Sarah called us, angry. Every time she found an article that might be relevant to understanding her disease, she ran into a paywall requiring $15-$40 to access it. Public money had paid for the research, yet she was barred from making any use of it. Luckily, she had us. Most people in Sarah’s position don’t have the luxury of friends at wealthy academic institutions with subscriptions to the literature.

During this time, I was pursuing an interest in the business models of scholarly communication. I wanted to understand the ways in which these models interfered with the dissemination of knowledge that could improve quality of life. Sarah’s experience illustrated one key part of the problem–the outcomes of research should be public goods, but the business models of publishing make them exclusive goods. Lack of access to published literature limits our ability to apply what we know to improving others’ quality of life. If doctors can’t access the literature, they can’t keep up with the latest innovations for care. If policy makers can’t access the literature, they can’t create evidence based policies. To advance solutions and cures, the outcomes of research must be open.

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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.

Nine new issues of ECS Transactions (ECST) have just been published for the upcoming 232nd ECS Meeting. The papers in these issues of ECST will be presented in National Harbor, MD, October 1-5, 2017.

ECST volume 80, issues 1 to 9 can now be accessed online through the ECS Digital Library.

These issues are also available for purchase as an electronic (PDF) edition through the ECS Online Store:

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By: Alyssa Doyle, ECS Membership Intern

University of Washington Student Chapter
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ECS would like to congratulate our two 2017 Chapters of Excellence winners, the University of Washington and the Munich Student Chapter, who will receive certificates in addition to recognition in Interface for their stellar achievements in continuing to showcase their commitment to ECS’s mission.

The University of Washington’s student chapter has climbed the ranks quite rapidly since it was founded in 2016.

The 60+ members have grown their impact on electrochemical and solid state science and engineering education immensely. Some of their greatest achievements to date include:

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By: Alyssa Doyle, ECS Membership Intern

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ECS would like to congratulate the 2017 Outstanding Student Chapter winner, the University of Maryland for their dedication and commitment to the advancement of solid state and electrochemical science and technology.

The award (formerly The Gwendolyn B. Wood Section Excellence Award) was first created in 2012 to distinguish student chapters that represent and uphold ECS’s mission by maintaining an active student membership base, participating in various technical activities, and organizing community outreach in the fields of electrochemical and solid state science and engineering education.

The University of Maryland student chapter has come a long way since its initial approval in 2011 and has become one of ECS’s most exemplary chapters. The chapter previously won the Outstanding Student Chapter award in 2013 and has been a Chapter of Excellence for the last three years.

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