Physical Methods for Investigation of Electrode Surfaces

Abbreviations frequently used in the literature on application of physical methods for investigation of the electrode surface  

EMIRS electrochemically modulated infrared reflectance spectroscopy 

HREELS high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy 

SNIFTIRS subtractively normalized interfacial Eourier transform infrared spectroscopy 

Fundamentals of Electrochemistry, Second Edition, By V. S. Bagotsky Copyright 2006 John Wiley Sons, Inc. 

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Electrochemical polymerisation produces films on an electrode surface.. Under controlled conditions uniform films up to a few mm thick, which carl be removed from the electrode for subsequent study, can be prepared. Physical properties can be modified by choice of the counterions (dopants) included in the film during growth. It is, however, more difficult to control chain structure and crosslinking than in chemical methods. Electrochemically produced polymers are, therefore, less well characterised than the best directly-synthesised polymers. While this is less satisfactory for fundamental investigations, it is of less concern for applications such as battery electrodes, artificial muscles and drug release agents. The two main approaches, direct-synthesis and electrochemical, are described in the following two sections. 

PAn and polyheterocycles have been prepared frequently by many investigators using electrochemical methods for subsequent studies of their physical and chemical properties. Earlier studies on the characterization of these polymers used potentiostatic, potentiody-namic, and galvanostatic methods to grow the polymer films on the electrode surfaces for no special reasons [I6d,28]. The potentiodynamic method was claimed to produce films with superior adhesion, smoothness, and optical properties [28aj,l], but no clear reasons were given. However, Kitani et al [28h] could not see the difference in chemical and physical properties of PAn... 

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