It is difficult to predict, especially the future
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FEATURE ARTICLE
It is difficult to predict, especially the future O. A. Petrii 1 Received: 28 April 2020 / Revised: 28 April 2020 / Accepted: 29 April 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
The title of this publication represents the well-known saying by Niels Bohr, the Nobel-prize winner, and, on my opinion, characterizes very neatly, even if in the humorous form, how difficult it is to predict the future. To get a glimpse of the future of electrochemistry, one must proceed from the fact that the development of science is dictated first of all by its own logics and the needs of practice and also in close interaction with the development of the other fields of knowledge. We can assume that in the future, the main directions of fundamental electrochemistry will still include the investigations of charged interfaces and specific features of the charge transfer across these interfaces. For certain simple systems, the structure of electrode/electrolyte interfaces is already known in sufficient detail on the phenomenological level [1], the next stage is the transition to building the detailed picture of the surface layer on the molecular level. We must gain deeper insight into the state of adsorbed species and develop methods for quantitative assessment of the true (microscopic) charge transferred at adsorption. The problems such as the role of surface roughness, porosity, and chemical heterogeneity are still topical. In any case, attention will be focused on the phenomenon of non-monotonic surface charge variations when adsorbed oxygen appears on the metal surface, which can be considered as an example of the potential-induced chemical heterogeneity. Studying the interfaces between the electrode and a room-temperature ionic liquids leads to a conclusion that the classical theory of the diffuse double layer developed for dilute aqueous electrolyte solution should give place to the new approaches based on statistical mechanics of condensed coulomb systems and density functional theory [2]. The structure of electronic double layer in the electrode will attract attention especially in connection with the wide use of carbon * O. A. Petrii [email protected] 1
Department of Electrochemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Moscow State University, Leninskie Gory 1, Bld. 3, Moscow, Russia 119992
materials in electrochemistry. The circle of these materials will become wider and those already used will require deeper investigation. The progress in computer engineering and computer simulations and also the development of in situ methods for studying electrode surfaces and the use of single-crystal faces have also lifted us to the higher new level of understanding of the phenomenon of electrocatalysis; however, the attention paid to electrocatalytic systems will increase. These studies will be directed both at the analysis of stages of electrocatalytic process and elucidation of the nature of intermediates and, especially, at finding how the rate of processes depends on the nature of electrode material
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