Constant electrochemical potential approach

During interactions at constant surface potential Vs, the surface charge decreases when two surfaces approach each other and ion adsorption or molecular group dissociation is involved in the surface charging. The system (liquid and surfaces) is in thermodynamic equilibrium, and a transfer of charges from the liquid to the surfaces occurs to ensure the equality of the electrochemical potentials of the ions in the bulk and near the surface. 

Recently, Fabre et al. [31] and Freund et al. [7, 8] used electro-chemically deposited, self-doped, boronic-acid-substituted, conducting polymers for saccharide and fluoride detection. Freund et al. prepared a potentiometric sensor for saccharides using self-doped PABA [7, 8]. The transduction mechanism in that system is reportedly the change in pKa of polyaniline that accompanies complexation, and the resulting change in the electrochemical potential. Sensors produced with this approach exhibit reversible responses with selectivity to various saccharides and 1,2-diols (Figure 3.22) that reflect their binding constants with phenylboronic acid observed in bulk solutions. The sensitivity... 

The cyclic voltammograms of these systems display quasi-reversible behavior, with AEv/v being increased because of slow electrochemical kinetics. Standard electrochemical rate constants, ( s,h)obs> were obtained from the cyclic voltammograms by matching them with digital simulations. This approach enabled the effects of IR drop (the spatial dependence of potential due to current flow through a resistive solution) to be included in the digital simulation by use of measured solution resistances. These experiments were performed with a non-isothermal cell, in which the reference electrode is maintained at a constant temperature... 

If the nonlinear character of the kinetic law is more pronounced, and/or if more data points than merely the peak are to be used, the following approach, illustrated in Figure 1.18, may be used. The current-time curves are first integrated so as to obtain the surface concentrations of the two reactants. The current and the surface concentrations are then combined to derive the forward and backward rate constants as functions of the electrode potential. Following this strategy, the form of the dependence of the rate constants on the potential need not be known a priori. It is rather an outcome of the cyclic voltammetric experiments and of their treatment. There is therefore no compulsory need, as often believed, to use for this purpose electrochemical techniques in which the electrode potential is independent of time, or nearly independent of time, as in potential step chronoamperometry and impedance measurements. This is another illustration of the equivalence of the various electrochemical techniques, provided that they are used in comparable time windows. 

In this equation, aua represents the product of the coefficient of electron transfer (a) by the number of electrons (na) involved in the rate-determining step, n the total number of electrons involved in the electrochemical reaction, k the heterogeneous electrochemical rate constant at the zero potential, D the coefficient of diffusion of the electroactive species, and c the concentration of the same in the bulk of the solution. The initial potential is E/ and G represents a numerical constant. This equation predicts a linear variation of the logarithm of the current. In/, on the applied potential, E, which can easily be compared with experimental current-potential curves in linear potential scan and cyclic voltammetries. This type of dependence between current and potential does not apply to electron transfer processes with coupled chemical reactions [186]. In several cases, however, linear In/ vs. E plots can be approached in the rising portion of voltammetric curves for the solid-state electron transfer processes involving species immobilized on the electrode surface [131, 187-191], reductive/oxidative dissolution of metallic deposits [79], and reductive/oxidative dissolution of insulating compounds [147,148]. Thus, linear potential scan voltammograms for surface-confined electroactive species verify [79]... 

Modern dynamic electrochemical techniques offer additional enhancement of the information acquisition process, including selectivity and detection limit. Instead of holding the potential of the working electrode at a constant value, the potential is varied in some specific way. In that approach, we have a choice of several nonsteady-state electrochemical techniques. They are all derived from the basic current-voltage concentration relationship (Section 5.1). A complete discussion of these electroanalytical techniques can be found in electrochemistry textbooks (Bard and Faulkner, 2001). 

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