Nokia recently announced the top three winners of its fourth annual Bell Labs Prize, which recognizes disruptive technology innovations with the potential to solve the critical challenges humanity faces within the next 10 years.

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This year’s competition attracted more than 330 proposals from 35 countries, which were narrowed down to around 20 semifinal applications shortlisted for collaboration with Bell Labs researchers over a two-month period. These refined semifinal proposals were then reviewed by the Bell Labs leadership team and the nine finalists selected, with each finalist having the chance to extend their collaboration with leading researchers at Bell Labs.

The nine finalist applications covered topics ranging from new approaches to machine learning, new materials synthesis, new human sensory technologies, new distributed computing paradigms, new battery technologies and new programmable radio and antenna technologies. The final judging event took place with a group of seven luminaries in the STEM field.

Joint second prize was awarded to ECS member Colm O’Dwyer, Professor of Chemistry at University College in Cork, Ireland, and Chair of the Electronics & Photonics Division of ECS, for his invention of a new class of 3D-printed batteries that could be incorporated into virtually any form factor, enabling new kinds of wearable devices with medical, health, communications and other future applications.

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The following article was originally published in the winter 2017 issue of Interface.

By: Roque J. Calvo, ECS Executive Director

United States President John F. Kennedy sent a powerful message to the country in his speech at Rice University in1962, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.”

History has shown that it was not necessary to go to the Moon to win Kennedy’s challenge. His primary goal was to elevate U.S. national security during the Cold War when the Soviet Union was advancing as a world power and showing signs of superiority in their space program. The U.S. put a man on the Moon in 1969, but far more important was the spirit of innovation that was created, leading to world-changing new technologies in security, communications, and transportation, which was the true win.

Kennedy understood the importance of innovation and risk taking to the success of a nation and his speech permanently implanted this message into the ideal of science and the role it plays in advancing mankind. He continues to stimulate progress because in his words, “there is new knowledge to be gained … and used for the progress of all people.” It is amazing how Kennedy’s influence has prevailed. In a recent ECS podcast with Steven Chu,* the former U.S. Secretary of Energy and 1997 Nobel Prize winner said, “As a scientist, you better be an optimist … half the science I try to do is really shoot for the Moon.”

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Applying a tiny coating of costly platinum just 1 nanometer thick—about 1/100,000th the width of a human hair—to a core of much cheaper cobalt could bring down the cost of fuel cells.

This microscopic marriage could become a crucial catalyst in new fuel cells that use generate electricity from hydrogen fuel to power cars and other machines. The new fuel cell design would require far less platinum, a very rare metal that sold for almost $900 an ounce the day this article was produced.

“This technique could accelerate our launch out of the fossil-fuel era,” says Chao Wang, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins University and senior author of a study published in the journal Nano Letters.

“It will not only reduce the cost of fuel cells,” Wang says. “It will also improve the energy efficiency and power performance of clean electric vehicles powered by hydrogen.”

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A new quantum material mimics a shark’s ability to detect the minute electric fields of small prey.

Such a technology might be used to study ocean organisms and ecosystems and to monitor the movement of ships for military and commercial maritime applications, says Shriram Ramanathan, professor of materials engineering at Purdue University. “So, it has potentially very broad interest in many disciplines.”

The material maintains its functional stability and does not corrode after immersion in saltwater, a prerequisite for ocean sensing. Surprisingly, it also functions well in the cold, ambient temperatures typical of seawater.

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The content below was published in the winter 2017 edition of Interface.

Each year ECS gives up to five Summer Fellowships to assist students in continuing their graduate work during the summer months in a field of interest to the Society.

Congratulations to the four Summer Fellowship recipients for 2017. The Society thanks the Summer Fellowship Committee for their work in reviewing the applications and selecting four excellent recipients.

2017 Edward G. Weston Summer Research Fellowship

Mapping Nanoscale Ion Transport
Lushan Zhou

Transport of ions at small length scales plays critical roles in almost all physical and biophysical processes. Investigation of local ion transport properties requires tools for direct visualization of spatially distributed ions at interfaces. Scanning ion conductance microscopy (SICM), a scanned nanoscale pipette, allows high resolution non-contact topography
imaging of samples bathed in electrolyte and therefore is well-suited for nanoscale ion transport studies. Read more.

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A new flexible, transparent electrical device inspired by electric eels could lead to body-friendly power sources for implanted health monitors and medication dispensers, augmented-reality contact lenses, and countless other applications, researchers report.

The soft cells—made of hydrogel and salt—form the first potentially biocompatible artificial electric organ that generates more than 100 volts. It produces a steady buzz of electricity at high voltage but low current, a bit like an extremely low-volume but high-pressure jet of water. It could be enough to power a small medical device like a pacemaker.

While the technology is preliminary, Michael Mayer, a professor of biophysics at the Adolphe Merkle Institute of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and the paper’s corresponding author, believes it may one day be useful for powering implantable or wearable devices without the toxicity, bulk, or frequent recharging that come with batteries.

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ECS fellow Plamen Atanassov was recently elected as a 2017 National Academy of Inventors Fellow. Atanassov is among 155 renowned academic inventors awarded this year’s fellowship, which is regarded as the highest professional accolade bestowed to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and welfare of society.

Atanassov, a Distinguished Professor Chemical and Biological Engineering and Director of the University of New Mexico Center for Micro-Engineered Materials, focuses the majority of his research efforts on developing catalysts for fuel cells. His work in creating a platinum-free catalyst for hydrogen fuel cells has helped overcome major barriers in applications such as hydrogen-powered vehicles, which could play a major role in transforming transportation and reducing greenhouse gasses.

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A team of researchers from MIT recently demonstrated a new electrochemical method to study thermodynamic processes in an ultra-high temperature molten oxide. In an effort to find new insights into the thermodynamic properties of refractory materials, researchers have developed a container-less electrochemical method to study thermodynamic properties of materials like aluminum oxide, which melts at temperatures above 2,000 degrees Celsius.

The finding were reported in the open access paper, “Electrochemical Study of a Pendant Molten Alumina Droplet and Its Application for Thermodynamic Property Measurements of Al-Ir,” which was recently published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society.

“We have a new technique which demonstrates that the rules of electrochemistry are followed for these refractory melts,” says senior author Antoine Allanore, an associate professor of metallurgy and member of ECS. “We have now evidence that these melts are very stable at high temperature, they have high conductivity.”

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Submit your manuscripts to the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES) Focus Issue on The Brain and Electrochemistry, Honoring R. Mark Wightman and Christian Amatore by March 11, 2018.

This focus issue of the JES is devoted to work at the juncture of electrochemistry, the brain, and the nervous system.

The issue will provide a forum for the discussion of research and developments on how the central (CNS) and the peripheral nervous systems (PNS) can be viewed and studied in terms of electrical circuits and electrochemical sensors, reactions and methods. This issue, as well as the The Brain and Electrochemistry symposium held at the 232nd ECS Meeting in October 2017, was inspired by the works of Christian Amatore from the Ecole Normale Supérieure and Mark Wightman from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They dedicated their careers to this topic, trained and influenced countless researchers over the years.

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The following is a roundup of the top articles published on the ECS Redcat Blog in 2017.

1. Impact factors on the rise

The journal impact factors for the Journal of The Electrochemical Society and ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology both rose by 8 percent this year. In July, Andrew Ryan, publication specialist at ECS, reported on the growth and what it means for ECS publications.

As a nonprofit society in constant competition with larger publishers with greater resources, ECS prides itself on disseminating the most groundbreaking and sought-after research to those who can use it to confront and resolve the world’s issues. This year’s JIF data indicates that ECS is not only doing its job, but steadily improving at it.

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