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Yan Vogel (Delft University of Technology)
 

Electrochemistry allows us to make substances, store energy and determine material properties. As a physical chemist, my dream is to dive into the electrified interface and record a movie where molecules and ions are the protagonists. Such a movie would allow us to understand and control electrochemical reactivity. Unfortunately, we cannot do that. Instead, we must use techniques that provide us with much cruder information and build up a movie from these broken extracts.

In this lecture, I will show you some experimental methods we are applying and developing to record some extracts of electrochemical reactions. I will show cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical source-gate measurements that reveal how ions and electrons transfer across a film of nanocrystals decorated with redox molecules. I will present in-situ absorption spectroscopy measurements that reveal changes in the electronic structure (redox state) upon electron transfer into a nanocrystal. I will finalize this lecture by presenting a technique we are developing to view the interface environment and reaction intermediates during electrochemical conversions.