MRS Meetings Blog

Symposium F Tuesday

Today's talks are impressive. The topics cover many aspects of battery application such as single crystal studies, new synthesis and manufacturing techniques, thermodynamic stability studies, structure-performance characterization, advanced techniques for characterizing battery materials, and battery systems (Mg-ion and Na-ion) other than Li-ion, and so on. 

Some of the talk are really remarkable. I especially like the talk of "Microstructural Evolution of Li(Ni,Co,Al)O2 and Li(Ni,Co,Mn)O2 Battery Cathode Material as a Function of Cycling Revealed by Electron Microscopy" given by Dean Miller from Argonne National lab. Their in-situ SEM video is so impressive.

 

I learnt to use a QR code in my posters and my CV and link that to my weblog. This is very fascinating.

David Turnbull lecture

Dr. Phaedon Avouris is a famous scientist and in the field and has made enormous contributions to materials science. In today’s talk he started with introducing the history of graphite. It is interesting that graphite dated back to 1564 in UK, when people use it to mark sheep. The official name of graphene comes in 1995, although people know its existence decades ago.

 Then the structure and characteristics of graphene were introduced in detail. I am not quite familiar with this topic, but Dr. Avouris did a good job to address important issues such as “How can graphene be used effectively in electronics” and what is needed for large scale application. Further information can be found in his publications.

One good thing from attending a world class scientist’s presentation is to learn how to summarize complicated and sometimes boring scientific theories, and then how to present it according to the need of audiences. I definitely learned a lot from today’s presentation.

 

MRS Town Hall Meetings

The meeting is host by Mr. Duane Dimos. He introduced tonight’s topic as where should MRS go; and what materials scientists expect MRS to be in the future.

Mr. Duane Dimos first gave a presentation about the history, mission and development of MRS. It is amazing that 12787 people attended MRS meeting in 2011 (fall, spring and other meetings and workshops), and by 2012 a total growth of 88% will be achieved for the past ten years.

Even with such a rapid development, MRS is considering improvement, such as “new workshop models, broaden meeting services, provide more effective venues and technologies for disseminating the work of participants, define and communicate the value of materials research to the broadest set of constituents, and continue to facilitate the society’s integration and participating the global materials community”, and so on…

The second presentation was provided by Mr. Michael Doyle, Director and founder of Virtual Edge Institute, which is an organization that helps event and meeting producers add virtual elements into their portfolios and programs. Mr. Michael Doyle talked about using modern virtual technology to promote MRS activities, such as putting some part of the meeting online. The goal is to “extend the reach, duration and value of MRS events through a rich online experience-especially regions with visa/travel challenges; provide year-round opportunity for constituents to stay connected with the MRS brand and each other; disseminate MRS information effectively and efficiently.”

The interacting part of the meeting is really encouraging. In total 9 audiences talked about their opinions about the question, some of them have attended MRS meeting for 20~30 years, and some are relatively young and new to MRS. Most of speakers stated that they still prefer physical meeting, but also support virtual activities to some extent, with some concerns about the operation, cost or security issues. Other suggestions are summarized here:

1. Virtual activities are good since people from some countries may not be able to come;

2. MRS may host workshops teaching young scholars how to transform knowledge into industry and how to start a company.

3. A good thing to come to physical meeting is establishing social network, which cannot be replaced by online activities. But it’s also good to capture those talks that one cannot attend due to conflict schedule.

4. One suggestion is that MRS can promote virtual activities step by step, and see how people respond.

5. Students and postdocs may not have chance to travel once online meeting is available, which is not the intention of MRS.

…

So there are many good suggestions. And MRS wants to hear everyone’s voice. We can do this by twittering suggestions adding “#mrstownhall”.

Advanced characterization techniques

The theme of the afternoon fuel cell sessions was fancy characterization techniques, such as LEIS, SIMS, STEM and other long acronym methods. It's incredible how much detail -up to spatial 10 pm resolution!!!- can be resolved. Also, in situ measurements are very fashionable at the moment: Tremendous amount of effort is spent on finding out what's happening atomistically while the fuel cell is operating. 

 

Plasmonic nanostructure-enhanced solar cell

Today I attended a series of talks related with plasmonic nanostructure-enhanced solar cells. The first and also the most impressive one was given by Prof. Mark Brongersma from Stanford University, who talked about “Plasmonic and High Index Nanostructures for Efficient Photovoltaic Energy Harvesting”. His talk was clear though a little too fast for me. I really learned a lot from his talk.

 

Go to the exhibition in the Hynes 2nd floor and visit all companies involved in the field of material science. Don't forget to find Boston museum of science. They show you how patterned surfaces can make biutiful colours in butterflies.

Come to the Technical poster design session today from 4 to 5. A good poster is always a great way to explain your works in a short time and still make it fascinating to the poeple.

I liked the idea of Time Miller about methods to explain scientific works for the general public. I always had problem to explain my resesrch even for my family.

nanoconfinement effect in PEM Fuel Cells

First interesting talk in the morning: How confinement on the nanoscale affects ion conductivity in carbon nanotubes. Simulations gave some insight regarding the nature of the interactions between fluorinated CNT walls and sulfonic acid, hydronium-, zundel ion complexes. But despite of the enormous increase in compuing power in recent decades, the accuracy of such simulations still does not reach the required level to predict or replace experiments. 

There were surprisingly few questions, probably because it's still "early".