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10 The PCB Design Magazine • August 2016 Andy Shaughnessy is managing editor of The PCB Design Magazine. He has been covering PCB design for 17 years. He can be reached by clicking here. including plenty of "non-PCB" events that fo- cus on flexible displays and LEDs, for example. We've done so many interviews that it's easy for readers to miss one or two over time. So check out our handy interview index; it can help you catch up on any of our tête-à-têtes that you may have missed. It's even alphabeti- cal by last name. Another Voice of the Industry, by any cal- culation, is the Printed Circuits Handbook. This "Bible of the industry" is now in its seventh edi- tion, and editors Clyde F. Coombs and Happy Holden are celebrating the ubiquitous tome's 50 th anniversary. So, this month we asked the editors and authors of the new edition to discuss their contributions to the book, and what it was like working on such a seminal publication. The editors and some of the veteran authors share stories that read like a timeline of the 20 th century PCB industry. Shameless plug: I wrote the EDA tools chapter, the first ever in the his- tory of the handbook, and I'm just happy to be in such great company. As I say in my part of this feature, working with Clyde and Happy was effortless, and a lot of fun too. And no Voices of the Industry issue would be complete without a nod to Alex Stepinksi, win- ner of our "Good for the Industry" award. Alex designed the manufacturing lines at Whelan Engineering, making Whelan the first new cap- tive shop in decades. Whelan was spending $7 million annually having PCBs made in China; Alex created a fully automated PCB shop at Whelan, with zero waste water discharge, for only $12 million, thus bringing the work back to the U.S. and setting a standard for other OEMs. In fact, Alex gives tours of the shop for any other OEMs who wish to follow his lead and keep production in-house. Alex is definitely "Good for the Industry." As September approaches, we're getting ready for trade show season again. We'll be at- tending PCB West, SMTA International, TPCA, Electronica, and HKPCA. If you can't make it to the show, don't worry—we'll bring all you the coverage you need. See you next month. PCBDESIGN VOICES OF THE INDUSTRY A team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) Institute of Soft Matter and Functional Ma- terials has observed for the first time in detail how lithium ions migrate into thin films of silicon. It was shown that extremely thin layers of silicon would be sufficient to achieve the maximal load of lithium. Lithium-ion batteries provide laptops, smart phones, and tablet computers with reliable ener- gy. However, electric vehicles have not gotten as far along with conventional lithium-ion batteries. This is due to currently utilised electrode materials such as graphite only being able to stably adsorb a limited number of lithium ions, restricting the capacity of these batteries. Now a team from the HZB Institute for Soft Matter and Functional Materials headed by Prof. Matthias Ballauff has directly observed for the first time a lithium-silicon half-cell during its charging and discharge cycles. She discovered two different zones during her investigations. Near the boundary to the electro- lytes, a roughly 20-nm layer formed having ex- tremely high lithium content: 25 lithium atoms were lodged among 10 silicon atoms. After discharge, about one lithium ion per sili- con node in the electrode remained in the silicon boundary layer exposed to the electrolytes. Seidl- hofer calculates from this that the theoretical maxi- mum capacity of these types of silicon-lithium bat- teries lies at about 2300 mAh/g. These are substantial findings that could im- prove the design of silicon electrodes: very thin silicon films should be sufficient for adsorbing the maximum possible amount of lithium, which in turn would save on material and especially on en- ergy consumed during manufacture—less is more. Lithium-ion Batteries: Capacity Might be Increased by Six Times