Bockris and Khan

The aim of this review is to present achievements and difficulties of electrochemical research focused on the structure of the metal/solution interface. The literature cited is generally limited to recent reviews and original papers, with relatively little attention paid to the historical background. A more complete list of references on the subject was given by Bockris and Khan in their book. ... 

Bockris and Reddy is a well-known text in the electrochemical field. Originally published in 1970, it has had a very long life as an introduction to a vast interdisciplinary area. The updating of the book should have been carried out long ago, but this task had to compete with other needs, for example, preparation of an advanced graduate text (Bockris and Khan, Surface Electrochemistry, Plenum, 1993), and while the sales of the first edition continued to be significant, the inevitable second edition remained a future project. Its time has come. 

Then (Bockris and Khan, 1983), from Eq. (9.5) (only at equilibrium),... 

Our book is intended to be a basic text in physical electrochemistiy it is not a comprehensive monograph for research workers (see Bockris and Khan, 1993). Nevertheless, it is desirable to equip the student with knowledge of some of the relevant terminology of topics at the frontier around the year 2000. Three of these are presented here. 

A tremendous amount of work has been devoted to ORR on all kinds of surfaces but Bockris and Khan [245] were forced to conclude that no generalizations as to mechanism have been made, and, correspondingly, no key to the treasure chest of fast catalysis... has been found. Despite decades of research and even though the effect of electrode material on the 02 reduction reaction (ORR) has been reviewed extensively, Yang and McCreery [246] concluded even more recently that detailed mechanisms remain elusive and that for carbon surfaces there is no consensus on the mechanism... 

The significance of the so-called Fermi level for a solution redox system is not altogether clear, but it has recently been critically examined by Bockris and Khan in relation to the vacuum energy level of the electron(s) involved. 

Bockris and Khan [17], however, have suggested that energy is not symmetrically distributed around the central point (i.e. the ground state) but in a Maxwell type distribution. 

From the above analysis, it may be seen that another reason for the variability of the data in the literature, which Drazic and Drazic and also Bockris and Khan have attributed mainly to the different waiting times and/or polarization times used by the various authors, these times being insufficient to establish the steady state, in some cases is the oscillatory influence of overvoltage, pH, and anion concentration on the Tafel slope. This possibility is supported by such apparently contradictory results as, for example, the values of b reported by Lorenz and co-workers" for Fe in HCl-NaCl solutions of 60 mV dec" for pH 0 1.5 and 30 mV dec" for pH 1.5-3, in comparison with 30 mV dec for pH < 1.5 and 60-70 mV dec for pH > 1.5, found by Oftedal. ... 

Bockris J O M and Khan S U 1993 Surface Electrochemistry (New York Plenum)... 

X. O M. Bockris and S. U. M. Khan, Surface Electrochemistry. A Molecular Level Approach, Plenum Press, New York, 1993. 

Fig. 7.67. Kobosew and Nekrassow model. Recombination is very slow, hence 0H- 1. The desoiption stage is the discharge of H+ on an absorbed H, and this reaction determines the availability of empty sites for fast proton discharge onto the metal. (Reprinted from J. O M. Bockris and S. U. M. Khan, Surface Electrochemistry, Plenum, 1993, p. 316.)...

Fig. 7.114. A plot of exchange current density for hydrogen evolution reaction vs. M-H bonding strength. (Reprinted hom S. U. M. Khan, Some Fundamental Aspects of Electrode Processes," in Modern Aspects of Electrochemistry, Vol. 15, R. E. White, J. O M. Bockris, and B. E. Conway, eds., Plenum 1983, p. 339.)...

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