Quantum electrochemistry, beginning

The advances made since 1970 start with the fact that the solid/solution interface can now be studied at an atomic level. Single-crystal surfaces turn out to manifest radically different properties, depending on the orientation exposed to the solution. Potentiodynamic techniques that were raw and quasi-empirical in 1970 are now sophisticated experimental methods. The theory of interfacial electron transfer has attracted the attention of physicists, who have taken the beginnings of quantum electrochemistry due to Gurney in 1932 and brought that early initiative to a 1990 level. Much else has happened, but one thing must be said here. Since 1972, the use of semiconductors as electrodes has come into much closer focus, and this has enormously extended the realm of systems that can be treated in electrochemical terms. 

A recent book on physical chemistry,5 written by a scientist6 and aimed primarily at other scientists, contains substantial historical information on the beginnings of physical chemistry and on various topics, such as chemical spectroscopy, electrochemistry, chemical kinetics, colloid and surface chemistry, and quantum chemistry. The book also discusses more general topics, such as the development of the physical sciences and the role of scientific journals in scientific communication. The same author has written a brief account of the development of physical chemistry after 1937,7 emphasizing the application of quantum theory and the invention of new experimental methods stopped-flow techniques (1940), nuclear magnetic resonance... 

Electrochemistry is one of the oldest defined areas in physical science, and there was a time, less than 50 years ago, when one saw Institute of Electrochemistry and Physical Chemistry in the chemistry buildings of European universities. But after early brilliant developments in electrode processes at the beginning of the twentieth century and in solution chemistry during the 1930s, electrochemistry fell into a period of decline which lasted for several decades. Electrochemical systems were too complex for the theoretical concepts of the quantum theory. They were too little understood at a phenomenological level to allow the ubiquity in application in so many fields to be comprehended. 

Anderson AB. Quantum chemical modeling of electrocatalytic reactions, including potential dependence beginning stages. In Wieckowski A, editor. Interfacial electrochemistry theory, experiments, and applications. New York Marcel Dekker, 1999 83-96. 

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