Stanko Brankovic, professor of electric and computer engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UH Cullen College of Engineering, served as a guest editor for a special issue of The Electrochemical Society Interface.
Being invited to be guest editor is a great honor, Brankovic said. “It’s basically a society of your peers recognizing you as an expert and trusting you to lead this special issue,” he added. “It’s not just a recognition for me, but also for the University of Houston in a field that is quite important these days since batteries, and everything else, are based on electrochemistry.”
The special issue, titled “Electrodeposition for the Future,” explored the topic of electrochemical deposition, a process by which a metal film is deposited onto a conductive surface from a metal ion containing solution. Electrochemical deposition is used to manufacture many products found in everyday life, but researchers have yet to fully understand the process at an atomic level.
Brankovic is director of the Electrochemical Nanofabrication and Nanomaterials Synthesis Group at the Cullen College. His research team focuses on better understanding of the physical and chemical processes that occur at the electrochemical interface and their uses in producing materials and nanostructures with novel functionality and applications.
“I have been watching the field grow in potential for a while on the academic research side. Now it has to transition into application to make it big in the mainstream and I predict that will happen within five years,” said Brankovic, who has been studying the phenomenon for over a decade. "The best is yet to come."
For this issue, Brankovic chose articles discussing fundamentals and potential applications of various deposition methods.
Coatings created by electrochemical deposition have many uses – from gold plating on jewelry to creating conductive pathways in circuit boards or protective coating on the wings of airplanes. Researchers are now studying the fundamental underpinnings of electrochemical deposition at the nanoscale to both improve and expand applications of the process.
Brankovic predicts a massive-range of applications – from photovoltaic uses to catalysts to microelectronics.
“These special editions allow us to gather exceptional research and breakthroughs that have the potential to grow the field in a considerable way,” said Brankovic. “I hope it gives ideas to practitioners and eventually they’ll come up with their own ideas how this could be applied.”
Interface is the leading journal for those in the field of solid-state and electrochemical science and technology. Published quarterly, this four-color magazine contains technical articles about the latest developments in the field, and presents news and information about and for members of ECS. For more information visit https://www.electrochem.org/