04/06/2019 How time flies
Time is like a pile
Sandeep Sebastian is a master student who has worked in Ozkan’s battery lab with me for more than a year, and he has just finished his defense on 4/2. Now, he’s leaving for his career life in Northern California.
How time flies! My memory still lingered at the time when we first met and started the project on battery modeling. It’s so hard for me to recognize a year has passed and it’s time to say goodbye.
Working and talking with Sandeep is very enjoyable. He’s a very hard working person with a specific goal. Along the road to his final defense, I have learned a lot as well. Research can never be an easy job, we have experienced some very disappointed time when the experimental results were far from satisfactory. Instead of being defeated and blaming each other, Sandeep and I always discussed and looked for new solutions and strategies. Finally, the fruits grew from patience.
Today, I have to say goodbye to my dear friend. I still remember the time we play tennis together and spend days and nights in the lab. My best wishes to you and see you soon in June!
(03/25/2019 – 03/29/2019) A trip to Fort Lauderdale for International Battery Seminar and Exhibit
03/25 Mon, Sunny
After a long-way flight from Santa Ana to Fort Lauderdale yesterday, I had a beautiful night which fully charged myself to get prepared for today’s highly dense Tutorial.
Fort Lauderdale, who has a nickname “American Venice“, is an extremely beautiful place designed for any couples to spend their honeymoons here. However, instead of enjoying the views and life here, I’m going to stay inside the convention center for a densely scheduled conference.
Day 1 is for tutorials. Since the event started at 8:00 am, I got up around 6, which made my time to be very flexible for casual walking and having some local breakfast before going to the conference center. Beyond my expectation, aside from some restaurant like IHOP or Denny’s, I could not find any local ones. So, I decided to head to the conference center and looked for restaurants along the way. While waiting at the signal, I looked up in a casual and found this Bagel breakfast restaurant, where I enjoyed my first meal in Florida.
The convention center is only 20 min walking from my space. While enjoying the humid and warm air of Florida, I found myself in front of that big fountain with these bronze swordfish, which was the landmark of the Greater Fort Lauderdale / Broward County Convention Center, my destination and the place I’m going to spend most of my time in the next four days.
*Tip: To whom that has a plan to visit the east coast of U.S. or Florida, I would highly recommend you to come to Fort Lauderdale for the Palm Beach, the Las Olas Blvd, the museums and don’t miss the stone crabs!
The convention center was three-storeyed high and the fashionably designed carpet attracted most of my attention. The design of the building made it less compact compared with the conference site in Pheonix for MRS conferences, but the actual meeting rooms were a little bit more crowded than my expectations. Very interesting topics about battery safety, solid-state batteries, and sulfur batteries were taught in the tutorial. The presenter also showed us the world’s smallest commercial lithium-ion battery, which was used as the source to stimulate the nerves behind the eyeballs to make the people with visual impairment regain the eyesight.
The tutorials are not only interesting but also very useful, here are some daily-life tips I would like to share with everyone:
- Never use an unofficial charger to charge your phones or other devices (Everyone should know that, but things become severely dangerous today to use chargers not provided by the original manufacturer, especially with fast charging promises)
- Use the fast charging function of your car or phone cautiously: Fast charging not only makes your batteries dying faster but also increase the possibility of thermal runaway and even explosion, try to avoid using fast charging stations or chargers if you are not in a hurry
- Lithium-ion battery Disposal: Abandon all your old habits (fully charged the battery overnight before the first usage, throw it away with the normal trash) on treating batteries before since lithium-ion batteries are totally different. Remember using electric tapes or other insulating tapes to cover the two electrodes of the battery and put them into a zipped plastic bag before disposal. It will be very good if you have a friend working in a battery lab or a company, bring these to him/her and don’t try to throw it away directly as you did for Ni batteries or Alkaline ones. (Don’t give your Ni-MH or Alkaline battery to me :))
- Don’t try to open a lithium-ion battery at home: If you have watched some youtube videos of opening the batteries, don’t follow them and open the batteries at home. It’s not just because of the explosion, but also the organic electrolyte inside is very harmful to your body. If there’s electrolyte leaking from your lithium-ion battery, never think it’s the same as happening to your AA alkaline ones.
Only when the setting sun shining upon the street, I realized it was already the end of my first day in Florida. Walking on the golden path back to my room, I wrote these down before the night was deep.
03/26 Tue
Embarrassing! I got up late today! It had never happened to me when I knew there would be
Fortunately, with the rental car, I was able to catch the second talk. The topic was my interest but the murky brain after a rushing morning made me hard to focus. Thanks to the sponsor of the conference, the pdf version of the talks were available for review.
It’s really surprisingly to know that the first commercialized Lithium-ion battery invented by SONY in 1991 was initially announced in this seminar (International Battery Seminar & Exhibit)