Ion transfer at the ITIES

The electrolyte dropping electrode has found particular application in the study of ion transfer at the polarized ITIES, with an emphasis on analysis. A range of species have been detected amperometrically by measuring the transport-limited current ... 

In this case, both the top and the bottom liquid phases contain the same ion at equilibrium. A micropipette tip is used to deplete concentration of this ion in the top solvent near the ITIES. This depletion results in the ion transfer across the ITIES (Fig. 13), which can produce positive feedback if the bottom phase contains a sufficiently high concentration of M ... 

Various types of research are carried out on ITIESs nowadays. These studies are modeled on electrochemical techniques, theories, and systems. Studies of ion transfer across ITIESs are especially interesting and important because these are the only studies on ITIESs. Many complex ion transfers assisted by some chemical reactions have been studied, to say nothing of single ion transfers. In the world of nature, many types of ion transfer play important roles such as selective ion transfer through biological membranes. Therefore, there are quite a few studies that get ideas from those systems, while many interests from analytical applications motivate those too. Since the ion transfer at an ITIES is closely related with the fields of solvent extraction and ion-selective electrodes, these studies mainly deal with facilitated ion transfer by various kinds of ionophores. Since crown ethers as ionophores show interesting selectivity, a lot of derivatives are synthesized and their selectivities are evaluated in solvent extraction, ion-selective systems, etc. Of course electrochemical studies on ITIESs are also suitable for the systems of ion transfer facilitated by crown ethers and have thrown new light on the mechanisms of selectivity exhibited by crown ethers. 

In Section 2.3.6 we considered ion transfer at the interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions (ITIES), where we found that a potential difference can arise because of differential transfer of ions. Ion movement across the interface can also be driven by the application of an external potential, and the rate of ion transfer can be detected as a current flow. This response allows one to examine the ITIES via voltammetric methods in the same way that electron transfer can be monitored at electrode surfaces (29-32). 

FIGURE 8.16 Schematic representation of the SECM operating in the facilitated (A) and simple (B) IT feedback mode. (A) Potassium ions are transferred from the pipette into DCE by interfacial complexation with DB18C6 (Equation 8.26) and from DCE to the bottom aqueous layer by interfacial dissociation mechanism (Equation 8.27). (Reprinted from J. Electroanal. Chem., 439, Shao, Y. and Mirkin, M.V., Scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) of facilitated ion transfer at the liquid/liquid interface, 137-143, Copyright 1997, with permission from Elsevier Science S.A.) (B) Positive feedback is due to IT from the bottom (aqueous) layer into the organic phase. Electroneutrality in the bottom layer is maintained by reverse transfer of the common ion across the ITIES beyond the close proximity of the pipette where its concentration is depleted. 

A hanging electrolyte drop has also been applied to determine ionic species in solution using differential-pulse-stripping voltammetry procedures [69]. Particular emphasis was given to assessing the selectivity and sensitivity of the method. The technique of current-scan polarography has also been applied in the study of electron-transfer [70] and coupled electron-transfer-ion-transfer [71,72] reactions at the ITIES in this configuration. 

The use of micropipette electrodes for quantitative voltammetric measurements of ion transfer (IT) and electron transfer (ET) reactions at the ITIES requires knowledge of geometry of the liquid interface. For the micrometer-sized micropipettes, both the orifice radius and the thickness of the pipette wall can be measured microscopically. A typical error of the microscopic determination of a radius was estimated to be 0.5/am for a micropipette and 1 /am for a microhole [24]. 

This chapter is basically divided in two parts, namely, the study of surface pressure-molecular area (jr — A) isotherms of phospholipids at ITIES and their effect on ion transfer. In the first part, the emphasis is put on topics which have been left out from Ref [5], i.e., Langmuir film techniques and theoretical modeling of jr — isotherms, as well as on the latest progress in the field, especially on experiments that combine Langmuir techni-... 

The description of the ion transfer process is closely related to the structure of the electrical double layer at the ITIES [50]. The most widely used approach is the combination of the BV equation and the modified Verwey-Niessen (MVN) model. In the MVN model, the electrical double layer at the ITIES is composed of two diffuse layers and one ion-free or inner layer (Fig. 8). The positions delimiting the inner layer are denoted by X2 and X2, and represent the positions of closest approach of the transferring ion to the ITIES from the organic and aqueous side, respectively. The total Galvani potential drop across the interfacial region, AgCp = cj) — [Pg.545]

When a monolayer of phospholipids is adsorbed at the ITIES, there must be a modification of the electrical structure of the interface [60]. Since we aim at describing the effect of this monolayer on the rate of ion transfer in a simple way, we assume a sharp interface also in the presence of phospholipids. The hydrophobic tails are located in the organic phase (negative x region), and the hydrophilic headgroups are located in the aqueous phase (positive X region). 

A theoretical approach based on the electrical double layer correction has been proposed to explain the observed enhancement of the rate of ion transfer across zwitter-ionic phospholipid monolayers at ITIES [17]. If the orientation of the headgroups is such that the phosphonic group remains closer to the ITIES than the ammonium groups, the local concentration of cations is increased at the ITIES and hence the current observed due to cation transfer is larger than in the absence of phospholipids at the interface. This enhancement is evaluated from the solution of the PB equation, and calculations have been carried out for the conditions of the experiments presented in the literature. The theoretical results turn out to be in good agreement with those experimental studies, thus showing the importance of the electrostatic correction on the rate of ion transfer across an ITIES with adsorbed phospholipids. 

Potential differences at the interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions (ITIES) are typical Galvani potential differences and cannot be measured directly. However, their existence follows from the properties of the electrical double layer at the ITIES (Section 4.5.3) and from the kinetics of charge transfer across the ITIES (Section 5.3.2). By means of potential differences at the ITIES or at the aqueous electrolyte-solid electrolyte phase boundary (Eq. 3.1.23), the phenomena occurring at the membranes of ion-selective electrodes (Section 6.3) can be explained. 

The electrodes used in conventional polarography and voltammetry are electronic conductors such as metals, carbons or semiconductors. In an electrode reaction, an electron transfer occurs at the electrode/solution interface. Recently, however, it has become possible to measure both ion transfer and electron transfer at the interface between two immiscible electrolyte solutions (ITIES) by means of polarography and voltammetry [16]. Typical examples of the immiscible liquid-liquid interface are water/nitrobenzene (NB) and water/l,2-dichloroethane (DCE). 

The membrane system considered here is composed of two aqueous solutions wd and w2, separated by a liquid membrane M, and it involves two aqueous solution/ membrane interfaces WifM (outer interface) and M/w2 (inner interface). If the different ohmic drops (and the potentials caused by mass transfers within w1 M, and w2) can be neglected, the membrane potential, EM, defined as the potential difference between wd and w2, is caused by ion transfers taking place at both L/L interfaces. The current associated with the ion transfer across the L/L interfaces is governed by the same mass transport limitations as redox processes on a metal electrode/solution interface. Provided that the ion transport is fast, it can be considered that it is governed by the same diffusion equations, and the electrochemical methodology can be transposed en bloc [18, 24]. With respect to the experimental cell used for electrochemical studies with these systems, it is necessary to consider three sources of resistance, i.e., both the two aqueous and the nonaqueous solutions, with both ITIES sandwiched between them. Therefore, a potentiostat with two reference electrodes is usually used. 

Many of the systems used for electrochemical studies of ion transfer processes taking place at the ITIES are systems of a single polarized interface. In these kinds of systems, the polarization phenomenon is only effective at the sample solution/... 

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