We have some very sad news. Long time ECS member, Dr. Alvin Salkind has died. He joined The Electrochemical Society in 1953 and continued as a member in good standing for more than 62 years.

This message from his family:

Dear ECS Society members,

We are sad to let you know that our father, Dr. Alvin J. Salkind, a fellow of the Electrochemical Society, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 87. Funeral services will be on Friday, June 12 at 10am at the Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, 40 Vandeventer Ave., Princeton NJ 08542. All are welcome to join us to celebrate his life and career.

James and Susanne

The first thing you need to know is that Dr. Salkind literally wrote the books on electrochemistry and alkaline batteries: Techniques of Electrochemistry Vol 1-3 with Ernest Yeager and Alkaline Storage Batteries with S. Uno Falk.

The ECS Digital Library will give you an idea of how important he was.

To say he was a friend of the Society is an understatement. He lived near the home office and made frequent visits. The picture above is from his latest visit. He was just here May 19th so Roque Calvo, ECS Executive Director, could interview him on video about his life (we’ll have that video soon). He was a pleasure and had lots of great stories.

Below is just a little from notes we gathered from the research we dug up from various sources about Dr. Salkind as we planned for the video interview:

(more…)

ECS treasurer E.J. Taylor (Founder & CTO of Faraday Technology), recently forwarded us a story from The Economist featuring ECS members and their contributions to research and development on the ever-improving lithium-ion battery.

Since the battery’s commercialization by Sony in the early 1990s, the lithium-ion battery has improved to produce better laptops, smartphones, and even power electric cars.

Vincent Battaglia, ECS member and head of the Electrochemical Technologies Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, states that the lithium-ion battery “is almost an ideal battery.” With its light weight and recharging capabilities, the battery has received much attention from researchers globally.

(more…)

Engineers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s College of Engineering have developed a high-performance 3D microbattery applicable for large-scale on-chip integration with microelectronic devices.

“This 3D microbattery has exceptional performance and scalability, and we think it will be of importance for many applications,” said Paul Braun, professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois.

“Micro-scale devices typically utilize power supplied off-chip because of difficulties in miniaturizing energy storage technologies. A miniaturized high-energy and high-power on-chip battery would be highly desirable for applications including autonomous microscale actuators, distributed wireless sensors and transmitters, monitors, and portable and implantable medical devices.”

(more…)

ECS student member Fudong Han and former member Chunsheng Wang have developed a novel solid state battery comprised of just one material that can both move and store electricity.

This new battery could prove to be revolutionary in the area of solid state batteries due to its incorporation of electrodes and electrolytes into a single material.

“Our battery is 600 microns thick, about the size of a dime, whereas conventional solid state batteries are thin films — forty times thinner. This means that more energy can be stored in our battery,” said Han, the first author of the paper and a graduate student in Wang’s group.

This from the University of Maryland:

The new material consists of a mix of sulfur, germanium, phosphorus and lithium. This compound is used as the ion-moving electrolyte. At each end, the scientists added carbon to this electrolyte to form electrodes that push the ions back and forth through the electrolyte as the battery charges and discharges. Like a little bit more sugar added at each end of a cookie-cream mixture, the carbon merely helps draw the electricity from side to side through the material.

(more…)

Elon Musk has just announced the new Tesla Energy division, which aims to move the energy grid away from dependency on fossil fuels and toward renewables.

The new line features a suite of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries—similar to the batteries used in the Tesla vehicles—for homes, businesses, and utilities. The company states that the battery can store renewable energy at a residential level for load shifting, backup power, and self-consumption of solar power generation.

During his announcement, Musk stated that this move could help change the “entire energy infrastructure of the world.”

The batteries have the ability to charge during non-peak energy usage hours and provide the home with energy during peak usage hours. The batteries are available at 10kWh or 7kWh, with a selling price of $3,500 and $3,000 respectively.

To put this into perspective, an energy comparison firm estimates that 1kWh can produce enough power for a full washing machine cycle.

Tesla hopes that this new line of batteries gets us closer to zero emission power generation and fosters a clean energy ecosystem.

“You’re not going to solve the energy problem by separating paper and plastic. We need to transition out of our dependency on fossil fuels and into renewables. As a society, it is really up to us to change.”

ECS Fellow Héctor D. Abruña recently spoke on the importance of developing better batteries to change the energy landscape at a Charter Day Weekend lecture at Cornell University.

The energy infrastructure as it exists today cannot maintain in its current form in the years to come. The United Nations expects the world’s population to reach 9.6 billion by 2050. Compare this to the current 7.2 billion population and the current issues with the energy infrastructure and the need for change becomes quite apparent.

Fortunately, Abruña and scientists like him are working to move us toward a more energy efficient and sustainable future through developments in fuel cells and batteries, which will power energy efficient and environmentally safe cars, as well as reshape the energy infrastructure itself.

“If we have any hope of solving the energy problems, we need better energy conversion and storage,” said Abruña.

(more…)

ECS student member Linsen Li, along with former member Song Jin, have recently completed the first part of their study focusing on the powerful potential of iron fluoride in lithium-ion batteries, which can improve energy storage.

“In the past, we weren’t able to truly understand what is happening to iron fluoride during battery reactions because other battery components were getting in the way of getting a precise image,” said Linsen Li, graduate student and research assistant at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

This development will likely impact energy storage and could, in the future, advance large-scale renewable energy storage technologies if the researchers can maximize the cycling performance and efficiency of the low-cost fluoride lithium-ion battery materials.

(more…)

What better day than Earth Day to highlight the work of ECS member Luke Haverhals, an assistant professor at Bradley University working in novel types of energy storage and conversion through the utilization of renewable, sustainable substrates such as hemp, wood, and silk.

Haverhals is a former student of current ECS 3rd Vice-President Johna Leddy. Since departing from Leddy and the University of Iowa, Haverhals has worked in an area focused on wielding natural fibers using ionic liquids (i.e. enhanced energy conversion devices).

Ionic liquids have been gaining much notoriety lately, with potential game changing electrolytes for energy conversion devices ranging from batteries to fuel cells.

Make sure to join Haverhals and other scientists pioneering world-changing research by joining ECS today and attending our upcoming scientific meeting!

The modern environmental movement was born 45 years ago today. A small group of twenty-somethings with a passion for the environment rallied together to create a more earth-conscious society, establishing what has become known as Earth Day.

The original Earth Day focused primarily on the pollution issue, but this year’s Earth Day is heavily directed towards climate change and the energy infrastructure.

While there may be a war on science happening with people and politicians alike dismissing climate change as mere myth, scientists conducting research in the field state that evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

When looking at climate change on a global level, the numbers speak for themselves.

• Carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in 650,000 years
• Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000
• Land ice is dropping by 258 billion metric tons per year
• Sea levels have risen nearly 7” over the past 100 years

(more…)

LIVE WEBCAST: April 30th at 5:00pm
Find out more and register today!

Flow Batteries for Grid-Scale Energy Storage
Large-scale energy storage is required to meet a multitude of current energy challenges. These challenges include modernizing the grid, incorporating intermittent renewable energy sources (so as to dispatch continuous electrical energy), improving the efficiency of electricity transmission and distribution, and providing flexibility of storage independent of geographical and geological location. Read more.

How to Publish in ECS Journals
ECS publications span the entire subject area of electrochemistry and solid-state science. The Society publishes peer-reviewed technical journals, proceedings, monographs, conference abstracts, and a quarterly news magazine. The Society’s oldest title, Journal of The Electrochemical Society, has been in continuous publication since the Society’s founding in 1902.

Presented by Robert F. Savinell
Editor of the Journal of the Electrochemical Society and ECS Electrochemistry Letters.

ECS Student Member Benefits, Awards, and Travel Grants
ECS offers a variety of options for students to get involved. Tune in to find out more.

Presented by Beth Fisher
ECS Associate Director of Development & Membership Services

Space is limited! Register today!

Hosted by ECS and the Research Triangle Student Chapter of ECS.