Ultrasound vibration potential , effects

Electroacoustics — Ultrasound passing through a colloidal dispersion forces the colloidal particles to move back and forth, which leads to a displacement of the double layer around the particles with respect to their centers, and thus induces small electric dipoles. The sum of these dipoles creates a macroscopic AC voltage with the frequency of the sound waves. The latter is called the Colloid Vibration Potential (CVP) [i]. The reverse effect is called Electrokinetic Sonic Amplitude (ESA) effect [ii]. See also Debye effect. 

These are fundamental considerations and are of interest not just to electrochemists and sonochemists, but care must be taken in correctly attributing an apparent shift in an experimentally observed potential under ultrasound. As already mentioned, system parameters and other factors may influence an observation beyond the effect under investigation. Thus there have been reports on the use of the titanium tip of the sonic horn itself, suitably electrically insulated, as the electrode material [50]. Dubbed the sonotrode , this is a clever idea to combine the two active components of a sonoelectrochemical system the authors noted the expected enhancements in limiting currents and an alteration in the morphology of copper electrodeposited from aqueous solution on to the titanium tip, which was the reaction under test. However, although titanium is widely used in sonochemistry because of its low-loss characteristics under vibration, it is not a common electrode material for electroanalysis because of its inferior electron transfer characteristics... 

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