Scope and Limitations of Classical Electrochemical Methods

Abstract

The experimental tools of electrochemists were, until a few years ago, mainly rather simple measurements of electrical, physical and chemical quantities. Using a broad variety of experimental methods today called “classical electrochemical methods”, they were able to provide models of electrified interfaces with respect to both structure and dynamics. Unfortunately their results were in many cases of a very macroscopic nature, any interpretations of the model with respect to the microscopic structure and mechanistic aspects of the dynamics and reaction were only more or less reasonable derivations. This gap, which caused many misunderstandings of puzzling features in electrochemical processes and interfaces, has started to close. The use of an enormous variety of spectroscopic and surface analytical tools in investigations of these interfaces has considerably broadened our knowledge. In many cases microscopic models based on the results of these studies with “non-traditional electrochemical methods” have enabled us to understand many hitherto strange phenomena in a convincing way.