Electrode surface, concentration charges

The reactions (20) to (22) form the copper equilibrium on the electrode surfaces. Concentration of Cu(I) on the cathode surface affects the deposition rate. The maximum net rate of Cu+ production is at about —50 mV versus Cu/CuSC>4 and at higher overpotentials it decreases. Disturbing the Cu(II)—Cu(I)—Cu equilibrium can cause the formation of copper powder, but this is more a problem on the anode. For the current densities commonly used in electrorefining, the cathode overpotential is between 50 and 100 mV. The system is mainly charge transfer controlled and the effect of mass-transfer polarization is small. If Cu(I) concentration on the cathode surface decreases, mass-transfer polarization will increase, causing more uneven deposit. 

The description of corrosion kinetics in electrochemical terms is based on the use of potential-current diagrams and a consideration of polarization effects. The equilibrium or reversible potentials Involved in the construction of equilibrium diagrams assume that there is no net transfer of charge (the anodic and cathodic currents are approximately zero). When the current flow is not zero, the anodic and cathodic potentials of the corrosion cell differ from their equilibrium values the anodic potential becomes, more positive, and the cathodic potential becomes more negative. The voltage difference, or polarization, can be due to cell resistance (resistance polarization) to the depletion of a reactant or the build-up of a product at an electrode surface (concentration polarization) or to a slow step in an electrode reaction (activation polarization). 

At finite positive and negative charge densities on the electrode, the counterion density profiles often exhibit significantly higher maxima, i.e. there is an overshoot, and the derived potential actually shows oscillations itself close to the electrode surface at concentrations above about 1 M. 

On the electrode side of the double layer the excess charges are concentrated in the plane of the surface of the electronic conductor. On the electrolyte side of the double layer the charge distribution is quite complex. The potential drop occurs over several atomic dimensions and depends on the specific reactivity and atomic stmcture of the electrode surface and the electrolyte composition. The electrical double layer strongly influences the rate and pathway of electrode reactions. The reader is referred to several excellent discussions of the electrical double layer at the electrode—solution interface (26-28). 

Guidelli and co-workers336-338 measured the potential of zero charge by chronocoulometry. They found that the pzc was independent of the electrolyte concentration in both NaC104 and Na2S04. However, Ea=0 in the presence of sulfates was ca. 40 mV more negative. These authors have explained this apparent discrepancy in terms of the perturbation of the solvent structure at the interface by the ions at the electrode surface, which are, however, nonspecifically adsorbed. 

Let us now investigate the case of a semiconductor with a relatively slow interfacial charge transfer. In this case the surface concentration of minority carriers is high and we can neglect the second term (which does not contain Ps). For higher values of electrode potential, the term L Qxp(-AUqfkT) can also be neglected. 

In a similar way, electrochemistry may provide an atomic level control over the deposit, using electric potential (rather than temperature) to restrict deposition of elements. A surface electrochemical reaction limited in this manner is merely underpotential deposition (UPD see Sect. 4.3 for a detailed discussion). In ECALE, thin films of chemical compounds are formed, an atomic layer at a time, by using UPD, in a cycle thus, the formation of a binary compound involves the oxidative UPD of one element and the reductive UPD of another. The potential for the former should be negative of that used for the latter in order for the deposit to remain stable while the other component elements are being deposited. Practically, this sequential deposition is implemented by using a dual bath system or a flow cell, so as to alternately expose an electrode surface to different electrolytes. When conditions are well defined, the electrolytic layers are prone to grow two dimensionally rather than three dimensionally. ECALE requires the definition of precise experimental conditions, such as potentials, reactants, concentration, pH, charge-time, which are strictly dependent on the particular compound one wants to form, and the substrate as well. The problems with this technique are that the electrode is required to be rinsed after each UPD deposition, which may result in loss of potential control, deposit reproducibility problems, and waste of time and solution. Automated deposition systems have been developed as an attempt to overcome these problems. 

The reduction wave of peroxydisulphate at dme starts at the potential of the anodic dissolution of mercury. The current-potential curve exhibits certain anomalous characteristics under various conditions. At potentials more negative than the electrocapillary maximum, a current minimum can be observed this is due to the electrostatic repulsion of the peroxydisulphate ion by the negatively charged electrode surface. The current minimum depends on the concentration and nature of the supporting electrolyte, and can be eliminated by the adsorption of capillary active cations of the type NR4. ... 

A certain potential is applied to the electrode with the potentiostatic equipment, and the variation of current is recorded as a function of time. At the very beginning a large current flows, which is due largely to charging of the electrode s EDL as required by the potential change. The maximum current and the time of EDL charging depend not only on the electrode system and size but also on the parameters of the potentiostat used. When this process has ended, mainly the faradaic component of current remains, which in particular will cause the changes in surface concentrations described in Section 11.2. 

Kakiuchi and Senda [36] measured the electrocapillary curves of the ideally polarized water nitrobenzene interface by the drop time method using the electrolyte dropping electrode [37] at various concentrations of the aqueous (LiCl) and the organic solvent (tetrabutylammonium tetraphenylborate) electrolytes. An example of the electrocapillary curve for this system is shown in Fig. 2. The surface excess charge density Q, and the relative surface excess concentrations T " and rppg of the Li cation and the tetraphenylborate anion respectively, were evaluated from the surface tension data by using Eq. (21). The relative surface excess concentrations and of the d anion and the... 

The adsorption of ions is determined by the potential of the inner Helmholtz plane 0n while the shift of Epzc to more negative values with increasing concentration of adsorbed anions is identical with the shift in 0(m). Thus, the electrocapillary maximum is shifted to more negative values on an increase in the anion concentration more rapidly than would follow from earlier theories based on concepts of a continuously distributed charge of adsorbed anions over the electrode surface (Stern, 1925). Under Stern s assumption, it would hold that 0(m) = 0X (where, of course, 0X no longer has the significance of the potential at the inner Helmholtz plane). 

The electrode reaction occurs in the region where by the influence of the electrode charge an electric field is formed, characterized by the distribution of the electric potential as a function of the distance from the electrode surface (see Section 4.3). This electric field affects the concentrations of the reacting substances and also the activation energy of the electrode reaction, expressed by the quantities wT and wp in Eq. (5.3.13). This effect can be... 

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