Achilles Heel strategy

Although many improvements have been made to the measurement techniques over the last 30 years, there has been little attention paid to the Achilles heel of analysis, that of the sampling procedures. The regulatory requirements put a heavy burden on the analyst even for water analysis, and proper sampling strategies and quality reagents are required. 

Obviously these developments will not be possible by relying on electrochemistry only. Indeed, as we have explained above, electrochemistry is a splendid and powerful tool for the unravelling of mechanistic intricacies that are hardly accessible to other physicochemical methods. However, its Achilles heel is the fact that electrochemistry is rather blind to chemical structures. Transient electrochemical methods will certainly be able to establish with a considerable subtlety how an intermediate reacts, yet for the most cases they will not be able to tell the structure of this intermediate. This requires then its use in conjunction with other chemical techniques and strategies. In this respect, the knowtei e based on structural (viz. static) studies will certainly be valuable. However, the coupling of dynamic electrochemical techniques with "dassicar spectroscopic methods (NMR, IR, ESR, etc) seems also highly worthwhile and desirable. It is then one of the interests of this NATO ARW Conference to have provided several drcumstances where these aspects have been examined and discussed. 

Lummiss JAM, Beach NJ, Smith JC, Fo DE. Targeting an Achilles heel in olefin metathesis A strategy for high-yield synthesis of second-generation Grubbs methyh-dene catalysts. Cat Set Technol. 2012 2(8) 1630—1632. 

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