Electrochemistry News Items & Facts - February 2022

Every day, we all use battery powered devices at home, drive vehicles, eat packaged foods, and drink clean water. These are a few examples of the countless aspects of our modern lifestyles which are reliant on electrochemistry - broadly defined as the study of how electricity interact with materials.

As an electrochemistry instrumentation company, Admiral Instruments proudly serves our customers who are among the millions of scientists, engineers, & technicians around the world using potentiostats to uncover new ways electrochemistry may benefit us all.

To celebrate how electrochemistry has shaped the past, touches our present-day lives, and influences the future, every month Admiral Instruments posts five notable news articles, publications, & trivia somehow related to electrochemistry. Click on each entry to read more from the source article!

Electrochemistry News Items & Facts for February 2022:

1. The model X26 Taser generates a series of 100 millisecond pulses with a 1200 V peak voltage. Each pulse carries 100 microcoulombs of charge with an average current of 1.9 mA.
   

2. Ion thruster technology uses electricity to accelerate ions as a form of propulsion in space. Although ion thrusters have been used in spacecraft for decades and are orders of magnitude more efficient than conventional chemical propulsion, ion thrusters have been too small scale to use on human-occupied spacecraft. However, the ion thrusters on the Tiangong space station are slated to become the first spacecraft in human history to transport humans with ion thrusters.
   

3. "Cold Welding" involves welding pieces of metal together with pressure only, rather than any applied heat. This process only works by first removing the surface oxide layer of the metals to be bonded together, though.
   

4. Tiny smart devices known as spin-torque oscillators (STOs) can be used to harvest and convert 2.4 GHz radio waves, commonly used for Wi-Fi internet connections, into energy to power small electronics, for example a 1.6 V LED lightbulb.
   

5. Class 1 Integrated Circuit (IC) manufacturing clean rooms allow for only up to 10 dust particles per cubic meter of air. Compare this with the up to 10,000 dust particles per cubic meter of air allowed in hospital operating rooms!