Impact Canada is working on a $4.5-million project known as the Charging the Future Challenge. The goal is to accelerate made-in-Canada battery innovation, build a clean energy future, and provide economic growth in Canada. The 18-month challenge offers five finalists the opportunity to pitch their ideas for battery breakthroughs to a jury for a chance to win up to $700,000 each to develop battery prototypes, with the winner receiving a $1 million grand prize. (more…)

Naoki Ota. Photo Credit: 24M

ECS’s Detroit Section is proud to present guest speaker Naoki Ota at its September section meeting. He will speak on:

“Lithium-Ion Batteries: Semi-Solid Electrode Technology—Next Generation Product / Manufacturing Platform for Lithium Ion”

Naoki Ota
President and CTO
24M Technologies, Inc.
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA (more…)

Energy storage is crucial for the successful transition to renewable energy. Yet lithium-ion batteries have major limitations. Demand for lithium has increased exponentially, but production has not kept pace. Extracting lithium by brine mining is a long, costly, energy-intensive, and dangerous process with significant environmental impact. Access is difficult as most lithium mines are in South America.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras developed a rechargeable iron ion battery to replace lithium. It uses mild steel as the anode and can store a high amount of energy. The iron battery withstood 150 cycles of charging and discharging under controlled conditions. After 50 cycles, the battery had 54 percent capacity retention. (more…)

Canada is looking for its next big battery breakthrough!

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Minkyu Kim is the 2019 winner of the ECS Korea Section Student Award

The ECS Korea Section Student Award was established in 2005 to recognize academic accomplishments in any area of science or engineering in which electrochemical and/or solid state science and technology is the central consideration. To qualify for this award, applicants must (1) be a student who is pursuing a PhD at a Korean University, (2) be nominated by a university faculty member and (3) be a member of ECS at the time of the nomination. (more…)

Venkataraman Thangadurai, University of Calgary chemistry professor and associate head.

University of Calgary Chemistry Professor Venkataraman Thangadurai’s background in solid-state batteries, solid oxide fuel cells, proton conducting SOFCs, and gas sensors have made him a source for information over the years. Because of this, the longtime ECS and battery division member has been invited to present several presentations this spring.

International Battery Event

This March,  Thangadurai will speak at the International Battery Seminar & Exhibit taking place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The annual event showcases state of the art energy storage technology developments for consumer, automotive, military, and industrial applications, as well as offer attendees insights from guest speakers sharing their thoughts on significant material advancements, product development, manufacturing, and application of battery systems and enabling technologies.

ECS Biannual Meetings

Similar to the International Battery Seminar & Exhibit, ECS hosts biannual meetings on a broader scale, including a diverse number of topics in the electrochemical, solid state science, and technology field, of which Thangadurai has been a recurring speaker of.

In 2018, he attended AiMES as an invited guest speaker presenting his work, “Chemical and Electrochemical Stability of Fast Lithium Ion Conducting Garnet-Type Metal Oxides in H₂o, Aqueous Solution, CO₂, Li and S,” available in ECS Meeting Abstracts.

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Chuanfang (John) Zhang, Valeria Nicolosi, and Sang-Hoon Park. Credit: Naoise Culhane

Have you ever wished you could increase your cellphone battery life? Well, that technology may very well already be here.

Researchers from AMBER, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Advanced Materials and BioEngineering, at Trinity College Dublin, have announced the development of a new material which offers the potential to improve battery life in everyday electronics, like smartphones, according to Irish Tech News.

The discovery could mean that the average phone battery life, roughly 10 hours of talk time, could increase to 30-40 hours.

MXenes, an ink-based nanomaterial, not only significantly improves battery life, but it also offers its batteries the flexibility to become smaller in size, without losing performance. (more…)

Kang Xu, lead author.

“What is the most ideal [solid-electrolyte interphase] SEI or interphase that would enable the next generation of the battery chemistries?”

It was a question that had been lingering in the minds of Kang Xu, fellow of US Army Research Laboratory and team leader; Chunsheng Wang, University of Maryland chemical and biomolecular engineering department professor, as well as one of the most cited researchers of 2018; and Ying Shirley Meng, University of California, San Diego nanoengineering professor, fellow of The Electrochemical Society, and associate director of the International Battery Association.

Together, the trio set out to pursue this question, resulting in the publication of their paper “Perspective—Fluorinating Interphases.” (more…)

It’s winter. And with that comes heavy coats, icy winds, and occasionally, below freezing temperatures: conditions not favorable for batteries.

Car batteries

Temperature extremes, in general, are not favorable to batteries. According to Lifewire, lead-acid batteries drop in capacity by about 20 percent in normal to freezing weather, and down to about 50 percent in temperatures that reach about -22 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a result, you may find your car battery giving out on any given winter morning. This is due to reduced capacity and increased draw from starter motors and accessories. This is because starter motors require a tremendous amount of amperage to get going: knocking out the capacity of even the newest batteries. (more…)

University of Houston researchers Yan Yao, left, Hui Dong and Yanliang Leonard Liang. Photo Credit: University of Houston

A new version of high-energy magnesium batteries has been discovered by researchers from the University of Houston and the Toyota Research Institute of America, according to Phys.org. The battery operates with limited electrolytes while using an organic electrode, allowing it to store and discharge much more energy than earlier magnesium batteries.

Yan Yao, an ECS member, UH Student Chapter faculty advisor, and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UH, said the researchers identified chloride—in the commonly used electrolyte—as a contributor to magnesium batteries’ sluggish performance.

Yao, a principal investigator with the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH, used the chloride-free electrolyte to test organic quinone polymer cathodes with a magnesium metal anode; the battery remaining stable through 2,500 cycles.

Magnesium batteries are particularly exciting as magnesium itself offers far more natural advantages over lithium. (more…)