There is a strong incentive to exploit clean, renewable energy sources to address the challenges in sustainable global development. Solar energy is the most abundant, clean, renewable energy source, and the most recent issue of Interface focuses on solar fuels. Guest editor Nick Wu notes that solar energy can be utilized in three ways: solar thermal systems that convert solar energy to enthalpy stored in working fluids, photovoltaics that convert sunlight to electricity, and solar fuels that convert solar energy to chemical energy stored in chemical fuels. In his current column, entitled “The Law of Sigmoidal Growth,” Interface Editor Krishnan Rajeshwar reflects on his recent encounters with several predictions that the futurist Ray Kurzweil has made. The issue also features Highlights from the 223rd ECS meeting in Toronto, a commentary from Adam Heller on the Yuasa-Boeing 787 battery, and an ECS Classics by J. C. Garcia and T. D. Burleigh on the “Beginnings of Gold Electroplating.”
From the President
What's New
In his first column as the new ECS President, Tetsuya Osaka said, “It is a great pleasure and unique honor for me to serve as President of ECS, especially considering that I will be the first person from Japan to fill this important role. … It has been a wonderful experience to be involved in such an important organization and to learn all the important initiatives that ECS is constantly carrying out for promoting electrochemical and solid state science and technology. I will certainly devote all my efforts to serve ECS with the aim of consolidating its success and high reputation in the scientific community. Indeed, we have seen in recent years a continuous increase in the number of attendees at the biannual ECS meetings. I believe that this acceleration is motivated by the growing concern on environmental and energy issues.”
President Osaka went on to write about the importance of the Society’s role in key scientific areas: “Electrochemistry plays a unique role in addressing those issues by developing new batteries to power sustainable cars or storage alternatives, and green energy sources; hence the growing importance of a society such as ECS that represents electrochemistry in all its scientific and technological aspects. Indeed batteries are key devices for promoting innovations and ECS has constantly devoted a particular attention to these electrochemical storage devices.
“Another important development at ECS is in the management of its publications. The impact factor is an important parameter that drives the choice of where the scientific community submits its publications. The importance of “the” impact factor may be disputable but it continues to have an impact on authors. Because of the way the impact factor is calculated, last year the Society made the decision to create new journals, with two to cover the electrochemistry side, and two journals to cover the solid state side. This will ensure that the ECS journals are categorized properly within the Science Citation Index. The Society’s flagship, Journal of The Electrochemical Society, continues its high-quality, peer-reviewed publication, but now with a focus on electrochemical science and technology. It will one of my main goals to encourage the Japanese electrochemistry and solid state communities to submit their best results to JES and the new journals, so as to substantially contribute to their growth.”
The University of Maryland Student Chapter received the Society’s first Outstanding Student Chapter Award. Led by faculty advisor Eric Wachsman and Chapter President Colin Gore, the University of Maryland Student Chapter formed in 2011 and quickly established itself as a role model. Among other activities, the Chapter recently participated in the U.S. Congressional Visit Days.
ECS is again proud to sponsor the International Meeting on Lithium Batteries (IMLB 2014). IMLB, the premier international conference on the state of lithium battery science and technology, will be held in Como, Italy, June 10-14, 2014. ECS will publish the proceedings from the conference in ECS Transactions and will publish a selection of peer-reviewed papers from the meeting in a focus issue of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society.
CSTIC 2013—Over 260 speakers and more than 700 attendees from around the world attended the China Semiconductor Technology International Conference (CSTIC), March 2013. Sponsored by ECS, CSTIC promotes technical exchanges on the latest developments in semiconductor technology and manufacturing. Sponsored by ECS, CSTIC also presents awards to outstanding student posters.
Your Article. Online. Fast!—As the only nonprofit publisher in the field, ECS is committed to the shortest lagtimes anywhere, broad dissemination, discoverability, no page charges, and the publication of special focus issues. Learn more about the best place to publish your research.
Advancing the Science—Take a whirlwind tour of all the exciting things that happened in the ECS community in 2012; read the 2012 ECS Annual Report.
Free Resources—Two features that appear in every issue of Interface are excellent, free resources for researchers. Websites of Note is a quick look at some of websites useful to the broad electrochemical community. Tech Highlights provides free online access to noteworthy articles from the ECS journals.
Redcat—Redcat is a unique community created by and for everyone in electrochemistry and solid state science and technology. The latest release helps you stay in touch: now you can sign up for alerts from any Redcat Group, and you choose the frequency (daily or weekly).
