Electrochemical determination of kinetic parameters of surface confined redox probes in presence of intermolecular interactions by means of Cyclic Voltammetry. Application to TEMPO monolayers in gold and platinum electrodes

Operando film-electrochemical EPR spectroscopy tracks radical intermediates in surface-immobilized catalysts

The development of surface-immobilized molecular redox catalysts is an emerging research field with promising applications in sustainable chemistry. In electrocatalysis, paramagnetic species are often key intermediates in the mechanistic cycle but are inherently difficult to detect and follow by conventional in situ techniques. We report a new method, operando film-electrochemical electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy (FE-EPR), which enables mechanistic studies of surface-immobilized electrocatalysts. This technique enables radicals formed during redox reactions to be followed in real time under flow conditions, at room temperature and in aqueous solution. Detailed insight into surface-immobilized catalysts, as exemplified here through alcohol oxidation catalysis by a surface-immobilized nitroxide, is possible by detecting active-site paramagnetic species sensitively and quantitatively operando, thereby enabling resolution of the reaction kinetics. Our finding that the surface electron-transfer rate, which is of the same order of magnitude as the rate of catalysis (accessible from operando FE-EPR), limits catalytic efficiency has implications for the future design of better surface-immobilized catalysts.

Galinstan Liquid Metal Electrical Contacts for Monolayer-Modified Silicon Surfaces

Galinstan is the brand name for a low-melting gallium-based alloy, which is a promising nontoxic alternative to mercury, the only elemental metal found in the liquid state at room temperature. Liquid alloys such as Galinstan have found applications as electromechanical actuators, sensors, and soft contacts for molecular electronics. In this work, we validate the scope of Galinstan top contacts to probe the electrical characteristics of Schottky junctions made on Si(111) and Si(211) crystals modified with Si-C-bound organic monolayers. We show that the surface-to-volume ratio of the Galinstan drop used as a macroscopic contact defines the junction stability. Further, we explore chemical strategies to increase Galinstan surface tension to obtain control over the junction area, hence improving the repeatability and reproducibility of current-voltage (I-V) measurements. We explore Galinstan top contacts as a means to monitor changes in rectification ratios caused by surface reactions and use these data, most notably the static junction leakage, toward making qualitative predictions on the DC outputs recorded when these semiconductor systems are incorporated in Schottky-based triboelectric nanogenerators. We found that the introduction of iron particles leads to poor data repeatability for capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements but has only a small negative impact in a dynamic current measurement (I-V).

Analogue circuit realisation of surface-confined redox reaction kinetics

The literature on voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) recognises the importance of using large-amplitude sinusoidal perturbations to better characterise electrochemical systems. To identify the parameters of a given reaction, various electrochemical models with different sets of values are simulated and compared against the experimental data to determine the best-fit set of parameters. However, the process of solving these nonlinear models is computationally expensive. This paper proposes analogue circuit elements for synthesising surface-confined electrochemical kinetics at the electrode interface. The resultant analogue model could be used as a solver to compute reaction parameters as well as a tracker for ideal biosensor behaviour. The performance of the analogue model was verified against numerical solutions to theoretical and experimental electrochemical models. Results show that the proposed analogue model has a high accuracy of at least 97% and a wide bandwidth of up to 2 kHz. The circuit consumed an average power of 9 μW.

Non-Ideal Cyclic Voltammetry of Redox Monolayers on Silicon Electrodes: Peak Splitting is Caused by Heterogeneous Photocurrents and Not by Molecular Disorder

Over the last three decades, research on redox-active monolayers has consolidated their importance as advanced functional material. For widespread monolayer systems, such as alkanethiols on gold, non-ideal multiple peaks in cyclic voltammetry are generally taken as indication of heterogeneous intermolecular interactions─namely, disorder in the monolayer. Our findings show that, contrary to metals, peak multiplicity of silicon photoelectrodes is not diagnostic of heterogeneous intermolecular microenvironments but is more likely caused by photocurrent being heterogeneous across the monolayer. This work is an important step toward understanding the cause of electrochemical non-idealities in semiconductor electrodes so that these can be prevented and the redox behavior of molecular monolayers, as photocatalytic systems, can be optimized.

Beyond the Laviron Method: A New Mathematical Treatment for Analyzing the Faradaic Current in Reversible, Quasi-Reversible, and Irreversible Cyclic Voltammetry of Adsorbed Redox Species

A new algorithm that describes the faradaic current for elementary redox reactions in the cyclic voltammetric responses of persistently adsorbed species on metal electrodes at any scan rate is presented. This work does not assume electrochemical reversibility and instead demonstrates a set of equations that encapsulate how the forward and back charge-transfer rate constants influence the data as a function of the experimental time scale. The method presented here is compared against other approaches that rely on either finite-difference calculations or that require numerical approximation of improper integrals (i.e., ±infinity as a bound). The method here demonstrates that the current-potential data can be described by incomplete gamma functions, whose two arguments capture the relevant kinetic variables. Following the notation for the Butler-Volmer model of charge transfer, exact solutions are presented for the cases of the charge-transfer coefficient, α, equal to 1 or 0. A related algorithm based on these results affords calculation of current-potential data for 0 < α < 1, allowing comprehensive analysis (i.e., point by point) of voltammetric data throughout the reversible, quasi-reversible, and irreversible regimes. Accordingly, this work represents an alternative to the method of Laviron, i.e., analyzing just the peak splitting values, for experimentalists to understand and interpret their voltammetric data in totality.