Application Examples with Pulsed Heating

Hot-wire electrochemistry with directly pulse-heated microwire electrodes can be considered to be a special branch of high-temperature electrochemistry. It is characterised by two attributes (1) it can be done with common, generally available instruments and (2) in contrast to classical high-T-electrochemistry, the increased temperature is applied only where it is required, but all other regions of the cell content remain unaffected. These characteristics are of practical, not of fundamental, nature. It means that the results of this technology would be available in most cases also with classical high pressure electrochemical cells. 

Pulsed electrode heating till now did not find very broad application. The following examples mark the beginning of a research direction where heated 

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Rare earth silicates exhibit potential applications as stable luminescent materials for phosphors, scintillators, and detectors. Silica and silicon substrates are frequently used for thin films fabrication, and their nanostructures including monodisperse sphere, NWs are also reliable templates and substrates. However, the composition, structure, and phase of rare earth silicates are rather complex, for example, there are many phases like silicate R2SiOs, disilicate R2Si207 (A-type, tetragonal), hexagonal Rx(Si04)602 oxyapatite, etc. The controlled synthesis of single-phase rare earth silicate nanomateriais can only be reached with precisely controlled experimental conditions. A number of heat treatment based routes, such as solid state reaction of rare earth oxides with silica/silicon substrate, sol-gel methods, and combustion method, as well as physical routes like pulsed laser ablation, have been applied to prepare various rare earth silicate powders and films. The optical properties of rare earth silicate nanocrystalline films and powders have been studied. 

The results presented here show that electrical pulsation causes reversible enhancement of peptide transport through human skin in vitro. In all cases, only intact peptide was measured. Moreover, the enhanced flux cannot be accounted for by increased current, and it is most likely due to increased ionic mobility of the peptide within the skin. Thus, electrical pulsation reversibly alters the ion-transport properties of skin. The rate-limiting barrier to skin transport of ionized compounds is the lipids of the stratum comeum. Alteration of stratum comeum lipids results in a significant increase in skin transport (Golden et al, 1987 Potts and Francoeur, 1990). For example, heating the skin to temperatures just above the stratum comeum lipid phase-transition temperature results in a 100-fold increase in sodium-ion conductivity. The sodium-ion conductivity returns to pretreatment values when the skin is cooled (Oh et al, 1993). Similarly, alteration of stratum comeum lipid stmcture with chemical perturbants such as oleic acid increases ion conductivity (Potts et al, 1992). The application of a transient electrical pulse to other lipid-based membranes creates a high-permeability state associated with the reversible formation of pores within the membrane (electroporation). Thus, it seems likely that electrical pulsation of human skin results in the formation of transient pores within stratum comeum lipids. 

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