ELECTROCHEMISTRY OF IMMOBILIZED MICROPARTICLES AND MICRODROPLETE: ACCESS TO FUNDAMENTAL DATA OF SOLID MATERIALS AND IONS

The idea to study the electrochemistry of immobilized microparticles has been published by this author for the first time in 1989. In the last 32 years, this approach has been shown to be very successful not only for analytical characterization of solid materials, but also applicable to extract thermodynamic and kinetic data, and even to determine the age of metal specimen. In 2000, it has been shown that the electrochemistry of immobilized microdroplets gives an elegant access to determine the Gibbs free energies of ion transfer between immiscible solvents. These measurements are performed with a standard 3-electrode potentiostate and can be used also for solvents, which cannot be used in experiments with the classical 4-electrode technique. The electrochemistry of microparticles and microdroplets share several common features with respect to the electrode mechanisms: in both cases three-phase electrodes are realized and ion and electron transfer proceed simultaneously. This talk reviews the activities of the speaker and his cooperation partners during the last 3 decades paying special attention to those results, which are of general interest.