Interest in electric and hybrid vehicles continues to grow across the globe. The world economy saw EV sales go from around 315,000 in 2014 to 536,000 in 2015, and trends so far for 2016 show that the number of vehicles sold this year is on track to far exceed numbers we’ve seen in previous years. Moving EVs forward But in order to make these cars, there needs to be an energy storage source that is not only sustainable, but cheap…
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Scientists can now directly probe hard-to-see layers of chemistry due to the development of an X-ray toolkit out of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The research team behind the initiative believes that their development could provide insight about battery performance and corrosion. Additionally, it could give insight into a variety of chemical reactions, including biological and environmental processes. The from LBNL: In a first-of-its-kind experiment at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, an X-ray source known as a synchrotron, researchers demonstrated this…
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Currently, electric vehicles depend on a complex interplay of batteries and supercapacitors to get you where you’re going. But a recently published paper, co-authored by ECS Fellow Hector Abruna, details the development of a new material that can take away some of the complexity of EVs. “Our material combines the best of both worlds — the ability to store large amounts of electrical energy or charge, like a battery, and the ability to charge and discharge rapidly, like a supercapacitor,”…
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Just over 45 years ago today, 500,000 women marched down New York City’s Fifth Avenue to celebrate the anniversary of the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment. Since that day, Aug. 26 has been annually celebrated in the U.S. as Women’s Equality Day – a celebration of a major turning point in the women’s rights movement: the right to vote. While women’s move toward equality has gained much momentum since the 1920s, there have been plenty of bumps in the…
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In recent years, the focus on alternative means of transportation has almost exclusively highlighted automobiles. But ECS member Telpriore Gregory Tucker is shifting his attention in another direction: electric bikes. Tucker was recently awarded the 2016 Arizona Legislative District 27-New Business of the Year by the Arizona House of Representatives for his sustainable business efforts with the U.S. Battery Bike Company. Now, Tucker is in full gear with his new company, Sirius E-Bikes, and is discussing the advantages of electric…
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Electric vehicles have become more visible in the automobile market over the past few years, but many potential buyers still cite one thing as a major deterrent in going electric: range anxiety. Range anxiety is a term many use to describe the fear of an EV’s battery running out of juice while driving, leaving them stranded away from a charging station. However, a new study published by a team from MIT and the Santa Fe Institute looked at data in…
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Biomedical innovations have helped shape the world of modern medicine. From pacemakers to auto-dispensing medications, advances in medical technology have revolutionized the world we live in. But what happens when some of these devices need to be removed? That’s where “transient electronics” come in. The concept behind this new technology is that rather than removing medical devices through surgery, scientists could simply develop the device so it could just disappear when the time is appropriate. The latest development in transient…
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Adam Heller’s work in electrochemical engineering has touched the lives of people across the globe. As the inventor of the painless diabetes blood monitor, his developments in healthcare have had an enormous societal and economic impact. Heller’s work spans a range of technologies, touching areas related to battery and energy—including solar cells, the lithium battery, and photoelectrocatalysis. Heller’s journey though the sciences took flight in 1961, when he received his PhD from Ernest David Bergmann at the Hebrew University. From...
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A Stanford University-led team recently published research detailing how particles charge and discharge at the nanoscale, giving new insight into the fundamental functioning of batteries and opening doors for the development of better rechargeables. This new insight into the electrochemical action that powers Li-ion batteries provides powerful knowledge into the building blocks of batteries. “It gives us fundamental insights into how batteries work,” says Jongwoo Lim, a co-author of the study. “Previously, most studies investigated the average behavior of the…
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A new open access paper published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society entitled, “Lithium-Ion Cathode/Coating Pairs for Transition Metal Containment,” finds a new cathode coating for li-ion batteries that could extend the technology’s lifespan. According to Green Car Congress, the dissolution of transition metals is a major contributor to a li-ion battery’s expedited aging and degradation. However, this new study published in JES by ECS members David Snydacker, Muratahan Aykol, Scott Kirklin, and Christopher Wolverton from Northwestern University makes…
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