Electrochimica Acta 46 (2001) 1385– 1386
www.elsevier.nl/locate/electacta
Book reviews
Energy Storage Systems for Electronics, Tetsuya Osaka
and Madhav Datta (Editors), Gordon and Breach Sci-
ence Publishers, Amsterdam, 2000, ISBN: 90-5699-176-
0, Price: US $145
The renaissance in the battery industry over the last
decade or so is undoubtedly being driven principally by
the energy demands of consumer electronic products. In
the past few years a number of books on power sources
have been published, but these have either covered the
whole field, including SLI, traction and starting batter-
ies, have concentrated on a single system or have
discussed only battery materials.
This volume is devoted exclusively to power sources
for portable electronic products. Rather than discussing
the characteristics and performance of commercial cells,
however, it is aimed ‘‘… at capturing the technological
advances made in the development of battery and other
energy storage systems’’, and thus to a very large extent
revisits areas already well (and sometimes better) docu-
mented in Besenhard’s Handbook of Battery Materials
and Wakihara and Yamomoto’s Lithium Ion Batteries.
The choice of content in this new book is also rather
strange. There is one chapter on Li/CFx primaries, but
nothing more on other lithium primaries (nor indeed on
any other primary), apart from a brief mention in an
overview chapter where Li/FeS2 rates seven lines of
text. The neglect of primary systems is surprising, given
the extensive use of such power sources in many con-
sumer products. Rechargeable alkaline manganese cells
are not mentioned. There are, nevertheless, some very
useful chapters, and some material that has not ap-
peared elsewhere.
The book is divided into five sections. Following two
overview chapters, Mature Technologies reviews sealed
nickel cadmium systems and NiMH batteries. The next
section, Recent and Near Future Technologies, which
occupies well over half of the book, consists of six
chapters on aspects of lithium batteries and one on
zinc/air. One of these, on cathode materials for lithium
batteries by Guyomard, is very well considered and
comprehensive. Emerging Technologies considers
lithium polymer batteries with polymer cathodes, an
account of the Oak Ridge thin film lithium batteries,
0013-4686/01/$ - see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
polymer electrolyte fuel cells and ultra capacitors. The
book is concluded by a useful chapter on the electronics
associated with charge control and capacity monitor-
ing.
C.A. Vincent
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Modern Electroplating, fourth edition, Edited by M.
Schlesinger and M. Paunovic, The Electrochemical Soci-
ety Inc, Pennington, NJ, Wiley, New York, 2000. ISBN
0-471-16842-6; 868 pp.; £ 96 – 95
‘Modern Electroplating’ published by the Electro-
chemical Society has been a standard reference for
practitioners in the field of electrodeposition for many
years. The first publication of the book edited by A.G.
Gray dates back to 1953. F.A. Lowenheim edited the
second (1963) and third (1975) editions. Some 25 years
later, a fourth edition prepared by M. Schlesinger and
M. Paunovic is now available, written mostly by new
authors. In the Introduction, the editors note that since
the publication of the previous editions ‘electroplating
has developed from an ill defined area into an exact
science’. While the term exact science may be overly
optimistic there is no doubt that the scientific under-
standing of the fundamental principles of electroplating
has much progressed in recent years, on both the
mechanistic and the engineering level. Many complex
phenomena can be numerically simulated today and
sophisticated experimental methods are available for
the identification of reaction mechanisms, nucleation
and growth phenomena and for the characterisation of
structure and properties of deposits. These new devel-
opments do not appear prominently in the present
book, which follows a more traditional approach, treat-
ing the plating of different metals and alloys one by one
from a practical point of view. The book therefore
serves primarily as a reference for people confronted
with specific plating problems and as a guide to the
. relevant literature.
1386 Book re6iews
The book is divided into 26 largely self-contained
chapters written by different authors. It is unavoidable
for a such a multi-author book that the depth and
breadth of the treatment of different topics varies. The
first chapter contains a very elementary discussion of
principles, including some simple sample calculations.
Chapters 2–13 deal with plating of specific metals and
alloys. They form the core of this book and provide
much useful information on electrolytes, deposition
conditions as well as deposit properties and applica-
tions. Special chapters are then devoted to plating of
semiconductors, plating on insulators and plating of
conductive polymers. Electroless plating of copper,
nickel, cobalt, gold and of alloys are covered in chap-
ters 17–22. These chapters attest to the growing tech-
nological importance of electroless plating and the
underlying electrochemical phenomena. The last few
chapters of the book are devoted to a discussion of
surface cleaning, manufacturing technologies, monitor-
ing and control, and to environmental issues. The latter
topic is treated only from a US perspective, using
government Internet sites as primary sources. In view
Publishers wishing to ha6e books (in the field of electrochemistry) re6iewed should send them to the Editor-in-Chief.
of the ever-increasing importance of environmental is-
sues for the plating and surface finishing industry
world-wide, one would have liked to see a more in-
depth presentation of this broad and complex topic.
The fourth edition of ‘Modern Electroplating’ is a
valuable one-volume source of information for all those
confronted with practical electroplating problems. The
book is a must for libraries of institutions and indus-
tries concerned with electroplating, and the authors are
to be congratulated for their successful effort of collect-
ing and updating a vast amount of information. Like
the preceding editions, the present edition will undoubt-
edly be a commercial success because there is a clear
need for such a book. It is hoped that the electroplating
community will not have to wait for another 25 years to
see the next update of this very useful reference work.
D. Landolt
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