From One to 250 – Part 3: Batteries, Qubits, and Beyond

What 250 ECS Meetings Tell Us About the Evolution of Science

Want to see how science changes? Open an old ECS technical program.

Across 250 meetings, the subjects presented at ECS have documented not only what electrochemical and solid state scientists were studying, but what they believed was important, promising—or just beginning to seem possible.

Some fields have demonstrated remarkable staying power. Others emerged, exploded in popularity, and branched into entirely new areas. And some topics that once sounded futuristic now seem almost quaint.

Taken together, 250 ECS meetings provide a fascinating record of science in motion.

In the beginning, there were 20 papers

At the first meeting of the American Electrochemical Society in Philadelphia in April 1902, 52 people gathered to present 20 technical papers.¹

That may sound modest compared with today’s programs, but the reason for the gathering was remarkably familiar. The Society had been created because scientists and engineers working in the rapidly growing field of electrochemistry needed a place to present papers, debate ideas, and learn from one another.¹

And as the science expanded, ECS expanded with it. The High Temperature Materials Division was established in 1921. Electrodeposition followed in 1922. Electronics arrived in 1931, Physical Electrochemistry in 1936, Organic Electrochemistry in 1940, and Corrosion in 1942.²

Then came a field that it is almost impossible to imagine ECS without.

Batteries finally get their own home

Surprisingly, ECS didn’t establish its Battery Division until 1947.

World War II had dramatically accelerated battery research, creating what ECS’s centennial history describes as a clear need for a place where battery information could be exchanged and reviewed for publication.³

Nearly 80 years later, the subject has grown almost beyond recognition.

At the 202nd ECS Meeting in 2002, Rechargeable Lithium Batteries was already a named symposium. A year later there were separate symposia on Electrolytes for Lithium Ion Batteries and Lithium/Lithium Ion Batteries.⁴

Then the questions multiplied. Large-scale storage. Solid state batteries. Alternative chemistries. Safety. Modeling. Recycling. Critical materials. Manufacturing.

And at the 250th ECS Meeting? One symposium is titled AI-Driven Battery Materials Design and Manufacturing.⁵

That’s quite a journey from establishing a Battery Division simply to give battery researchers a scientific home.

Electronics had its own revolution

The invention of the transistor at Bell Labs in 1947 transformed far more than consumer electronics. It transformed ECS.

Before the solid state revolution, the Society’s electronics community concentrated heavily on technologies associated with lighting and television, including phosphors and cathode ray tubes. As semiconductor technology took off, ECS’s Electronics Division grew rapidly; by the time Gordon Moore joined ECS in 1957, it was the Society’s largest division.⁶

Then, in 1965, Moore published the prediction that became Moore’s Law—with roots that he later connected to discussions taking place around an ECS Meeting.⁶

Fast-forward a few decades and the symposium titles tell the next chapters.

In 2000, ECS was discussing Copper Interconnects, New Contact Metallurgies/Structures, and Low-K Interlevel Dielectrics.⁷ Then came advanced CMOS, post-CMOS technologies, two-dimensional electronic materials, atomic layer deposition, and advanced chip packaging. Now ECS programs include neuromorphic computing and artificial-intelligence hardware.

The transistor didn’t end one scientific story. It started new ones.

And then there was nano. Lots of nano.

The 1990s brought another scientific arrival.

ECS’s Fullerenes Group—today’s Nanocarbons Division—was founded in 1993.⁸

By the 201st Meeting in 2002, there was a symposium simply called Nanotechnology. At the 202nd Meeting, came Emerging Technologies in Nanoelectronics and Electrochemistry at Nanoscale Dimensions.⁴

Then the family tree grew: nanostructured materials, nanoparticles, nanowires, nanotubes, and nanocarbons.

And graphene.

The symposium titles practically tell the story themselves: Carbon Nanotubes and Nanostructures evolved into Carbon Nanotubes and Graphene and then Graphene and Beyond: 2D Materials.

Eventually the “beyond” included MXenes—a family of two-dimensional materials that didn’t even exist when ECS held its 200th Meeting.

Nano didn’t disappear. It became part of the scientific toolbox.

The questions got bigger, too

Environmental research isn’t new to ECS. Neither are hydrogen, energy efficiency, recycling, or cleaner industrial processes.

What changed is the scale of the questions. By 2019, one symposium title captured that evolution beautifully: Reduction of CO₂: From Laboratory to Industrial Scale.

Recent programs increasingly connect discovery to deployment: battery manufacturing and recycling, critical-material recovery, water electrolysis for hydrogen, renewable fuels, electrochemical manufacturing, resource recovery, recycling, and upcycling.

At the 249th Meeting, ECS pulled many of those threads together under the theme Sustainable Technologies, encompassing clean energy, decarbonization, circular materials, and climate-resilient systems.¹⁰

The question isn’t simply: Can electrochemistry solve this problem?

Increasingly, it’s: Can electrochemistry solve it at the scale the world needs?

Sometimes the technical program captures history in real time

Meeting programs also reveal something else: science responds remarkably quickly to the world around it.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the 240th Meeting included a symposium devoted specifically to Electrochemical and Solid State Science and Engineering Applied to COVID Issues.

Other recent programs have ventured into electrochemistry in space, artificial photosynthesis, soft robotics, electrochemistry and the brain, neuromorphic computing, and even switchable qubits.

And the 250th Meeting brings another sign of the times: AI-Driven Battery Materials Design and Manufacturing.⁵ Imagine explaining that symposium title to those 52 people gathered in Philadelphia in 1902!

So, what comes after 250?

Perhaps that’s the most interesting thing ECS’s technical programs teach us.

A new scientific discovery becomes a material. A material enables a device. A device becomes a technology. The technology creates new questions about performance, manufacturing, safety, cost, resources, and sustainability. And those questions send scientists right back to fundamental science.

For 250 meetings, ECS technical programs have captured that cycle. The terminology changed. The applications changed. The scale changed.

But scientists kept asking the next question—and ECS kept giving them a place to ask it.

What will be on the program at the 300th Meeting? If the first 250 meetings have taught us anything, some of the words probably haven’t even been invented yet.