Solution-state electrochemical reactions

Insulators lack free charges (mobile electrons or ions). At interfaces with electrolyte solutions, steady-state electrochemical reactions involving charge transfer across the interface cannot occur. It would seem, for this reason, that there is no basis at this interface for the development of interfacial potentials. 

It follows that corrosion is an electrochemical reaction in which the metal itself is a reactant and is oxidised (loss of electrons) to a higher valency state, whilst another reactant, an electron acceptor, in solution is reduced (gain of electrons) to a lower valency state. This may be regarded as a concise expression of the electrochemical mechanism of corrosion . 

For simplicity a cell consisting of two identical electrodes of silver immersed in silver nitrate solution will be considered first (Fig. 1.20a), i.e. Agi/AgNOj/Ag,. On open circuit each electrode will be at equilibrium, and the rate of transfer of silver ions from the metal lattice to the solution and from the solution to the metal lattice will be equal, i.e. the electrodes will be in a state of dynamic equilibrium. The rate of charge transfer, which may be regarded as either the rate of transfer of silver cations (positive charge) in one direction, or the transfer of electrons (negative charge) in the opposite direction, in an electrochemical reaction is the current I, so that for the equilibrium at electrode I... 

But that is not all. For dilute solutions, the solvent concentration is high (55 mol kg ) for pure water, and does not vary significantly unless the solute is fairly concentrated. It is therefore common practice and fully justified to use unit mole fraction as the standard state for the solvent. The standard state of a close up pure solid in an electrochemical reaction is similarly treated as unit mole fraction (sometimes referred to as the pure component) this includes metals, solid oxides etc. 

An excited particle that is to become involved in the electrochemical reaction must be sufficiently close to the electrode surface to diffuse to the surface within the lifetime of its excited state. It is better yet when it is present on the surface as an adsorbate. Sometimes, dyes are applied to the surface which are not themselves involved in any electrochemical reaction but which when excited react with the solution to produce a soluble secondary substance that will react (sensitization of the electrode surface). 

In general, the physical state of the electrodes used in electrochemical processes is the solid state (monolithic or particulate). The material of which the electrode is composed may actually participate in the electrochemical reactions, being consumed by or deposited from the solution, or it may be inert and merely provide an interface at which the reactions may occur. There are three properties which all types of electrodes must possess if the power requirements of the process are to be minimized (i) the electrodes should be able to conduct electricity well, i.e., they should be made of good conductors (ii) the overpotentials at the electrodes should be low and (iii) the electrodes should not become passivated, by which it is meant that they should not react to form on their surfaces any compound that inhibits the desired electrochemical reaction. Some additional desirable requirements for a satisfactory performance of the cell are that the electrodes should be amenable to being manufactured or prepared easily that they should be resistant to corrosion by the elements within the cell that they should be mechanically strong and that they should be of low cost. Electrodes are usually mounted vertically, and in some cases horizontally only in some rare special cases are they mounted in an inclined manner. 

The term photovoltaic effect is further used to denote non-electrochemical photoprocesses in solid-state metal/semiconductor interfaces (Schottky barrier contacts) and semiconductor/semiconductor pin) junctions. Analogously, the term photogalvanic effect is used more generally to denote any photoexcitation of the d.c. current in a material (e.g. in solid ferroelectrics). Although confusion is not usual, electrochemical reactions initiated by light absorption in electrolyte solutions should be termed electrochemical photogalvanic effect , and reactions at photoexcited semiconductor electodes electrochemical photovoltaic effect . 

Cyclic voltammetry is an excellent tool to explore electrochemical reactions and to extract thermodynamic as well as kinetic information. Cyclic voltammetric data of complexes in solution show waves corresponding to successive oxidation and reduction processes. In the localized orbital approximation of ruthenium(II) polypyridyl complexes, these processes are viewed as MC and LC, respectively. Electrochemical and luminescence data are useful for calculating excited state redox potentials of sensitizers, an important piece of information from the point of view of determining whether charge injection into Ti02 is favorable. 

Electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) is the process whereby a chemiluminescence emission is produced directly, or indirectly, as a result of electrochemical reactions. It is also commonly known as electrochemiluminescence and electroluminescence. In general, electrically generated reactants diffuse from one or more electrodes, and undergo high-energy electron transfer reactions either with one another or with chemicals in the bulk solution. This process yields excited-state molecules, which produce a chemiluminescent emission in the vicinity of the electrode surface. 

There are, however, obvious limitations. It is not possible to make a very small spherical electrode, because the leads that connect it to the circuit must be even much smaller lest they disturb the spherical geometry. Small disc or ring electrodes are more practicable, and have similar properties, but the mathematics becomes involved. Still, numerical and approximate explicit solutions for the current due to an electrochemical reaction at such electrodes have been obtained, and can be used for the evaluation of experimental data. In practice, ring electrodes with a radius of the order of 1 fxm can be fabricated, and rate constants of the order of a few cm s 1 be measured by recording currents in the steady state. The rate constants are obtained numerically by comparing the actual current with the diffusion-limited current. 

As expected from the anisotropy of chemical etching of Si in alkaline solutions, the electrochemical dissolution reaction shows a strong dependence on crystal orientation. For all crystal orientations except (111) a sweep rate independent anodic steady-state current density is observed for potentials below PP. For (111) silicon electrodes the passivation peak becomes sweep rate dependent and corresponds to a constant charge of 2.4 0.5 mCcm-2 [Sm6]. OCP and PP show a slight shift to more anodic potentials for (111) silicon if compared to (100) substrates, as shown in Fig. 3.4. 

Aquatic chemists have defined their own electrochemical standard state to fecilitate calculation of redox speciation in aqueous solutions. In this standard state, all reactions are conducted at pH 7.0, 25°C, and 1 atm. The concentrations of all other solutes are 1 molal (unless otherwise specifically noted). Values so obtained are designated with the subscript w. The pe s for the most important redox couples in seawater are given in Table 7.4. 

Figure 6.1. Free-energy change for the general electrochemical reaction, Eq. (6.6) initial state, Ox, in the bulk of the solution, outside the diffusion double layer final state. Red, in the bulk of the solution outside the diffuse double layer.

As in solution phase electrochemistry, selection of solvent and supporting electrolytes, electrode material, and method of electrode modification, electrochemical technique, parameters and data treatment, is required. In general, long-time voltam-metric experiments will be preferred because solid state electrochemical processes involve diffusion and surface reactions whose typical rates are lower than those involved in solution phase electrochemistry. 

The electrochemical processes involving Prussian blue and organic dyes studied above can be taken as examples of solid state redox processes involving transformation of a one solid compound into another one. This kind of electrochemical reactions are able to be used for discerning between closely related organic dyes. As previously described, the electrochemistry of solids that are in contact with aqueous electrolytes involves proton exchange between the solid and the electrolyte, so that the electrochemical reaction must in principle be confined to a narrow layer in the external surface of the solid particles. Eventually, however, partial oxidative or reductive dissolution processes can produce other species in solution able to react with the dye. 

In this equation, aua represents the product of the coefficient of electron transfer (a) by the number of electrons (na) involved in the rate-determining step, n the total number of electrons involved in the electrochemical reaction, k the heterogeneous electrochemical rate constant at the zero potential, D the coefficient of diffusion of the electroactive species, and c the concentration of the same in the bulk of the solution. The initial potential is E/ and G represents a numerical constant. This equation predicts a linear variation of the logarithm of the current. In/, on the applied potential, E, which can easily be compared with experimental current-potential curves in linear potential scan and cyclic voltammetries. This type of dependence between current and potential does not apply to electron transfer processes with coupled chemical reactions [186]. In several cases, however, linear In/ vs. E plots can be approached in the rising portion of voltammetric curves for the solid-state electron transfer processes involving species immobilized on the electrode surface [131, 187-191], reductive/oxidative dissolution of metallic deposits [79], and reductive/oxidative dissolution of insulating compounds [147,148]. Thus, linear potential scan voltammograms for surface-confined electroactive species verify [79]... 

The most noticeable example is that concerning Ru(bipy)32 + ions in acetonitrile solutions at a Pt electrodes with the reaction mechanism formulated as following. In the electrochemical reactions, the parent ions Ru(bipy)32+ undergo70,71 one-electron reduction (with the added electron localized on individual ligand -orbitals) and oxidation (with removal of a metal t2g electron) followed by ion s annihilation with the formation of the excited 3 Ru(bipy)32 + state and subsequent emission of light. 

The Boltzmannian Distribution. The general theory of chemical reaction rates is associated with the reactivity of rarely occurring, highly energetic states. It seems improbable that electrochemical reactions in solution will differ radically from chemical reactions in solution so as not to involve stales above the ground state. 

Among electrode processes with at least one charge transfer step, several different types of reaction can be found. The simplest interfacial electrochemical reactions are the exchange of electrons across the electrochemical interface by flipping oxidation states of transition metal ions in the electrolyte adjacent to the electrode surface. The electrode in this case is merely the source or sink of electrons, uptaking electrons from the reduced species and releasing them to the oxidized redox species in solution. Examples of simple electron transfer reactions are... 

This different behavior can be explained by considering that for a CE mechanism (the reasoning is similar for an EC one), C species is required by the chemical reaction whose equilibrium is distorted in the reaction layer (whose thickness in the simplified dkss treatment is <5r = jDj(k + 2)) and by the electrochemical reaction, which is limited by the diffusion layer (of thickness 8 = yfnDt). For a catalytic mechanism, C species is also required for both the chemical and the electrochemical reactions, but this last stage gives the same species B, which is demanded by the chemical reaction such that only in the reaction layer do the concentrations of species B and C take values significantly different from those of the bulk of the solution. In summary, the catalytic mechanism can reach a true steady-state current-potential response under planar diffusion because its perturbed zone is restricted to the reaction layer <5r, which is independent of time, whereas the distortion of CE (or EC) mechanism is extended until the diffusion layer 8, which depends on time, and a stationary current-potential response will not be reached under these conditions. 

The application of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for monitoring redox and other processes at metal-solution interfaces is illustrated by means of some recent results obtained in our laboratory. The detection of adsorbed species present at outer- as well as inner-sphere reaction sites is noted. The influence of surface interaction effects on the SER spectra of adsorbed redox couples is discussed with a view towards utilizing the frequency-potential dependence of oxidation-state sensitive vibrational modes as a criterion of reactant-surface electronic coupling effects. Illustrative data are presented for Ru(NH3)63+/2+ adsorbed electrostatically to chloride-coated silver, and Fe(CN)63 /" bound to gold electrodes the latter couple appears to be valence delocalized under some conditions. The use of coupled SERS-rotating disk voltammetry measurements to examine the kinetics and mechanisms of irreversible and multistep electrochemical reactions is also discussed. Examples given are the outer- and inner-sphere one-electron reductions of Co(III) and Cr(III) complexes at silver, and the oxidation of carbon monoxide and iodide at gold electrodes. 

Spectroscopy is also extensively applied to determination of reaction mechanisms and transient intermediates in homogeneous systems (34-37) and at interfaces (38). Spectroscopic theory and methods are integral to the very definition of photochemical reactions, i.e. chemical reactions occurring via molecular excited states (39-42). Photochemical reactions are different in rate, product yield and distribution from thermally induced reactions, even in solution. Surface mediated photochemistry (43) represents a potential resource for the direction of reactions which is multifaceted and barely tapped. One such facet, that of solar-excited electrochemical reactions, has been extensively, but by no means, exhaustively studied under the rubric photoelectrochemistry (PEC) (44-48). 

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