Realistic and Visionary Dreams

Fast progress of platinum computational elctrochemistry is stimulated by electrocatalysis, and tlte studies of CO adsorption predominate. Accumulated experience is extremely useful for modeling the reversible adsorption at the interface, but today the latter looks like a tiny brook in the vicinity of computational mainstream. The closest layer going from electrocatalysis is theoretical/ computational prediction of electrocatalytic activity in hydrogen reactions, °° as it requires the modeling of hydrogen adatoms. The main problem in this case is comparison with experiment, because a lot of factors besides adlayer stmcture affect the observed reaction rates. 

It is surely attractive to model first the stmcture of adlayers, and to verify the results using more or less direct information from X-ray techtuques and probe nucroscopy. However the important physical features of the interface can be missed in this 

In situ optical techniques should be considered as a very im-poitant tool, because of their natural compitability with the usual configuration of electrochemical cells. The limiting factor is always a model of optical signal, and a lot of important experimental results for platinum/solution interface still wait for physically grounded interpretation. 

Dttring the same period in situ IR spectroscopy started its active development. Nowadays the multivarious versions of this technique are widely applied in routine electrocatalytic studies, with predominating attention to adsorption of organic species. However Bewick s IR studies of hydrogen adsorption on Pt poly and on single crystals of several platinmn metals should not be forgotten. 

Second harmonic generation (SHG) of platinum/solution interface was pioneered by Com and coworkers,who managed to get the resportse of hydrogen adatoms and coadsorbed anions despite platintrm signal is rather low as compared with SHG of Cu, Ag and An. Frrrther steps resulted in a nttmber of particular 

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