Use of Selected XL Faces as an Aid to Electrocatalysis

During the last two decades, it has been discovered that, using single crystals as electrodes, one can find crystal planes on which reactions occur much more rapidly than on other planes. In some systems, a particular crystal face may give an advantage of an order of magnitude in rate constant compared with the results on a polycrystal. The effects are reaction specific, that is, the positive 

Electrochemical Rate Constants for the Oxygen Electroreduction on Cold Single Crystals in 1 M Sodium Hydroxide 

FIGURE 1.10 Current intensity versus electrode potential voltammetric profile for platinum single crystals, Pt(100) (cooled in air) with blue lines, Pt(110) with black lines and Pt(lll) in red lines, in 0.5 M sulfuric acid solution run at 0.05 V s 1 at room temperature. A difference with respect to the early single crystal preparation method by Will [18] is that the ones reported here are those obtained by Clavilier early in 1980. After 50 years of the first paper by Will on the use of single crystals for the oxygen electroreduction reaction and his finding of the given preferred activities on (111) and (100) planes, the industry still uses polycrystalline surfaces. 

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