A new issue of ECS Transactions (ECST) has just been published. This issue includes 19 papers which will be presented at the Sixth International Conference on Semiconductor Technology for Ultra Large Integrated Circuits and Thin Film Transistors (ULSIC vs. TFT 6), in Schloss Hernstein, Hernstein, Austria, May 21-25, 2017.
ECST Volume 79, Issue 1 can be found here.
Issues of ECST can also be purchased in the ECS ONLINE STORE as full-text digital downloads.
My name is Eric Pacansky and I am a graduating senior from the College of New Jersey (TCNJ). While at TCNJ, I have been studying business administration and have learned many concepts regarding how to run a business. To compliment my studies, I have had the good fortune of participating in two internships. I am grateful for the many opportunities and challenges these internships have presented, especially those I received as a membership services intern at ECS.
When I first arrived at ECS in December 2016, I was not exactly sure what electrochemistry was or why it was so important. Then, after being presented with some of the topics that fall under the umbrella of electrochemistry, I was worried that I wouldn’t last long at ECS since I wasn’t able to comprehend most of what electrochemistry is all about. Thankfully, I was assured that having a solid foundation in electrochemistry was not one of my job requirements in the membership department.
I was then informed about ECS’s Free the Science movement. Free the Science is ECS’s plan to provide platinum open access of its journals. This means authors will not have to pay publishing fees, and readers will not have to pay subscription fees. As someone who is studying business, this idea sounded crazy to me. It sounded like a utopian ideal that couldn’t possibly work. Why would the organization exist if it wasn’t trying to take every last dollar it possibly could? That’s when I was reminded of ECS’s mission to advance the science. For the most part, publishers have historically created paywalls that affect a person’s ability to either publish or gain access to an article. These paywalls have held back advancements in science. Removing these barriers is the future of scientific publishing and ECS’s work to do this shows the organization’s commitment to its core values and supporting scientists.
By: Alice H. Suroviec, Berry College
Wolfram|AlphaWolfram|Alpha is a computational search engine that uses an extensive collection of built-in data and algorithms to answer computation questions using a web-browser interface. It is a free website designed by the programmers behind the Mathematica software package.
www.wolframalpha.com
NRELMatDB is a computational materials database that primarily contains information on materials for renewable energy applications such as photovoltaic materials, and materials for photo-electrochemical water splitting. This website is a growing collection of computed properties of stoichiometric and fully ordered materials. It is a very useful database for those needing comparative data.
NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
www.materials.nrel.gov
By: Petr Vanýsek
The discovery of an electric arc can be tied to the use of an electrochemical energy source. Sir Humphry Davy described in 1800 an electric discharge using electrochemical cells1 that produced what we would call a spark, rather than an arc. However, in 1808, using an electrochemical battery containing 2000 plates of copper and zinc, he demonstrated an electric arc 8cm long. Davy is also credited with naming the phenomenon an arc (Fig. 1). An electric arc was also discovered independently in 1802 by Russian physicist Vasily Petrov, who also proposed various possible applications including arc welding. There was a long gap between the discovery of the electric arc and putting it to use.
Electrochemical cells were not a practical source to supply a sustained high current for an electric arc. A useful application of this low voltage and high current arc discharge became possible only once mechanical generators were constructed. Charles Francis Brush developed a dynamo, an electric generator, in 1878, that was able to supply electricity for his design of arc lights. Those were deployed first in Philadelphia and by 1881 a number of cities had electric arc public lights. Once that happened, the application and new discoveries for the use of the electric arc followed. Electric arc for illumination was certainly in the forefront. First, electric light extended greatly the human activities into the night and second, public street electric lights, attracting masses of spectators, were the source of admiration, inspiration, and no doubt, more invention.
The ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology is now featuring a focus issue on Thermoelectric Materials & Devices: Phonon Engineering, Advanced Materials and Thermal Transport. The issue reflects the symposia from the 228th ECS Meeting on Thermoelectric and Thermal Interface Materials in Phoenix, AZ.
In the issue’s preface, the authors tell us that advances in this field, “. . . can inspire developments in thermoelectrics that may underpin the next major advance in energy harvesting and cooling and ultimately improve the quality of our devices, and help drive energy efficiency and a greener society.”
The focus issue discusses advances, challenges, and applications in thermoelectrics and its various sub-fields such as phonon transport physics, materials science, electronics, condensed matter physics, engineering, the chemistry of materials, and processing technology.
The Society would like to thank the authors, reviewers, and editors who contributed to this focus issue. Special thank you to Colm O’Dwyer from University College Cork, Renkun Chen from the University of California, San Diego, Jr-Hau He from King Abdulla University of Science and Technology, Jaeho Lee from the University of California Irvine, and Kafil M. Razeeb from University College Cork.
Read the focus issue in the ECS Digital Library.
ECS is providing an opportunity for new authors to ask questions and get educated about ECS’s publications.
Join us at an author information session at the 231st ECS Meeting in New Orleans, LA. The session will provide insight into opportunities for publishing with ECS regarding the Journal of The Electrochemical Society, the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology, ECS Meeting Abstracts, ECS Transactions, and monographs.
We will also educate authors on:
The session is being held Tuesday, May 30, 1700-1800h in the Chequers room of the Hilton New Orleans Riverside. Check the meeting scheduler.
P.S. Unable to attend? Stop by the ECS exhibit booth to connect one-on-one with ECS staff.
Now is a very important time for institutions to have uninterrupted access to ECS content. A recent evaluation suggests that more than half of ECS published content involves the sustainability of our planet!
Important work in batteries, energy conversion, fuel cells, nanostructures, and more is being released every day from researchers and contributors in ECS peer-reviewed and rapid publication journals, and other ECS titles.
The Society offers various subscription packages:
ECS is a sponsor of the 68th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) being held August 27 – September 1, 2017 in Providence, Rhode Island.
The scientific theme of the meeting is Electrochemistry without Borders, meant to emphasize the global character of the electrochemical community encompassed by the ISE.
ECS is continuing its partnership with ISE and will be presenting a symposium on “Education for Electrochemistry and Electrochemical Engineering” covering present and future trends in electrochemistry and electrochemical engineering education at undergraduate and/or graduate levels.
Also, ECS President Krishnan Rajeshwar from The University of Texas at Arlington will be presenting “Photoelectrochemistry, Solid-State Chemistry, and Solar Fuels: A Nexus?” at this meeting.
Please visit the conference website for more information and to submit your abstract before March 22.
By: Mary Yess, ECS Deputy Executive Director & Chief Content Officer
Richard Poynder (@RickyPo) is well-known and well-respected in the open access community, especially for his “Open and Shut?” blog. Poynder has written an excellent post, which is part interview with Philip Cohen, founder of the SocArXiv preprint server, and part synopsis of the resurgent preprint server movement. The precursor of them all is arXiv, which was founded way back in 1991. Poynder asks, can preprint servers “gain sufficient traction, impetus, and focus to push the revolution the open access movement began in a more desirable direction?”
The post also talks a good bit about the preprint server framework created by the Center for Open Science (COS). ECS, who is working with COS on launching our own preprint server, gets several mentions in the article as well. In this age of 8-second attention spans, it’s a long article, but it’s well worth the read.
By: Jeff Inglis, The Conversation
Editor’s note: The following is a roundup of archival stories. 
On March 14, or 3/14, mathematicians and other obscure-holiday aficionados celebrate Pi Day, honoring π, the Greek symbol representing an irrational number that begins with 3.14. Pi, as schoolteachers everywhere repeat, represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
What is Pi Day, and what, really, do we know about π anyway? Here are three-and-bit-more articles to round out your Pi Day festivities.
First off, a reflection on this “holiday” construct. Pi itself is very important, writes mathematics professor Daniel Ullman of George Washington University, but celebrating it is absurd:
The Gregorian calendar, the decimal system, the Greek alphabet, and pies are relatively modern, human-made inventions, chosen arbitrarily among many equivalent choices. Of course a mood-boosting piece of lemon meringue could be just what many math lovers need in the middle of March at the end of a long winter. But there’s an element of absurdity to celebrating π by noting its connections with these ephemera, which have themselves no connection to π at all, just as absurd as it would be to celebrate Earth Day by eating foods that start with the letter “E.”
And yet, here we are, looking at the calendar and getting goofily giddy about the sequence of numbers it shows us.
