Nearly 2,400 people from 54 countries attended the 232nd ECS Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, October 1-5, 2017. Participants could choose from 49 symposia, over 1,250 oral talks, 644 student presentations, and nearly 570 posters. Plenary Session ECS President Johnna Leddy presented the opening remarks at the 232nd ECS Meeting. ECS President Johna Leddy welcomed attendees to the meeting during Monday evening’s plenary session. In addition to wrapping up the first full day of technical sessions and honoring award winners,...
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Capitalizing on tiny defects can improve electrodes for lithium-ion batteries, new research suggests. In a study on lithium transport in battery cathodes, researchers found that a common cathode material for lithium-ion batteries, olivine lithium iron phosphate, releases or takes in lithium ions through a much larger surface area than previously thought. “We know this material works very well but there’s still much debate about why,” says Ming Tang, an assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University. “In…
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ECS Short Courses are all-day classes designed to provide students or the seasoned professional with an in-depth education on a wide range of topics. Taught by academic and industry experts, the small class size makes for an excellent opportunity for personalized instruction helping both novices and experts advance their technical expertise and knowledge. Short courses are open to the public with special discounts given to meeting attendees. Sunday, May 13, 2018 | Seattle, WA Short courses will be offered at...
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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?” 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…
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Our guest on this episode of the ECS Podcast is Shirley Meng, professor of NanoEngineering at the University of California, San Diego. Meng founded the Sustainable Power and Energy Center, the goal of which is solving key technical challenges in distributed energy generation, storage, and power management. Meng is also the principal investigator of Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion research group. Her group is focused on functional nano and micro-scale materials for energy storage and conversion. She talked to…
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A new kind of lithium sulfur battery could be more efficient, less expensive, and safer than currently available lithium batteries. “We demonstrated this method in a coin battery,” says Donghai Wang, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State. “But, I think it could eventually become big enough for cell phones, drones, and even bigger for electric vehicles.” Lithium sulfur batteries should be a promising candidate for the next generation of rechargeable batteries, but they are not without problems. For…
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Tech Highlights was prepared by David Enos and Mike Kelly of Sandia National Laboratories, Colm Glynn and David McNulty of University College Cork, Ireland, Zenghe Liu of Verily Life Science, and Donald Pile of Rolled-Ribbon Battery Company. This article was originally published in the fall 2017 issue of Interface. Read the full article. The Effect of the Fluoroethylene Carbonate Additive in Full Lithium-Ion Cells In recent years, high voltage cathode materials have attracted a great deal of attention due to…
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Lithium batteries made with asphalt could charge 10 to 20 times faster than the commercial lithium-ion batteries currently available. The researchers developed anodes comprising porous carbon made from asphalt that show exceptional stability after more than 500 charge-discharge cycles. A high-current density of 20 milliamps per square centimeter demonstrates the material’s promise for use in rapid charge and discharge devices that require high-power density. “The capacity of these batteries is enormous, but what is equally remarkable is that we can…
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Our guest today, James Fenton, is the director of the Florida Solar Energy Center at the University of Central Florida – the nation’s largest and most active state-supported renewable energy and energy efficiency institute. Fenton is also the current secretary of the ECS Board of Directors. Listen to the podcast and download this episode and others for free through the iTunes Store, SoundCloud, or our RSS Feed. You can also find us on Stitcher.

Researchers have created a way to look inside fuel cells to see the chemical processes that lead them to breakdown. Fuel cells could someday generate electricity for nearly any device that’s battery-powered, including automobiles, laptops, and cellphones. Typically using hydrogen as fuel and air as an oxidant, fuel cells are cleaner than internal combustion engines because they produce power via electrochemical reactions. Since water is their primary product, they considerably reduce pollution. The oxidation, or breakdown, of a fuel cell’s…
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