Pervasive electrochemistry
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FEATURE ARTICLE
Pervasive electrochemistry Achim Walter Hassel 1 Received: 15 July 2020 / Revised: 15 July 2020 / Accepted: 17 July 2020 / Published online: 4 August 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Electrochemistry With last year’s Nobel Prize for the development of lithium ion batteries, electrochemistry as a discipline was well recognized by a broader scientific community and the society itself. This is however only one aspect of the importance of electrochemistry for solving our energy problems. Lots of attempts are presently made to tackle the global climate challenge. There is a large number of attempts such as avoiding CO2 emission by using regenerative energy (batteries required), reducing CO2 emission by changes in the process, for example, to fuel cells with higher efficiency (cheap and efficient electrocatalysts required), reuse of produced CO2 to generate fuels or produce compounds which are presently made from natural gas or oil. Also the steps into an extended use of hydrogen as energy carrier require electrochemical processes during production and use. A principal advantage of electrochemistry is that it is directly linking chemical reactions and electrical voltage/current. This allows driving chemical reactions with electrical energy on one side but also yield electrical signals from chemical reactions through sensors which can be directly processed further electronically. For sure the importance of electrochemistry will grow further and will pervade our daily life. Let us have a look into why and how this is happening and where are the future tasks for us as electrochemists or scientist entering this field.
Electrochemical equipment The general trend to smaller, faster and cheaper electronics with higher integration and extended methodology is also * Achim Walter Hassel [email protected] 1
Institute of Chemical Technology of Inorganic Materials (TIM), Johannes Kepler University Linz, Altenberger Str. 69, 4040 Linz, Austria
driving developments in electrochemistry. Today, highly integrated electronic circuits do not only provide the electronics of a potentiostat but combine it with signal generation such as potential steps, ramps for cyclic voltammetry (CV) or (sets of) sine waves for electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Data acquisition is fast enough to enable high scan rates in CVs or sampling in the time domain for FFT EIS or electrochemical noise. Embedded CPUs are powerful enough to run lots of firmware or software to complement the hardware to fully operational (miniaturized) electrochemical workstations. Further decreasing prices per unit will allow even wider distribution as well as higher parallelization, e.g. for massively parallel testing of batteries. These devices are ready to enter other fields.
Electrochemistry in production On the verge of fossil energy to renewables, the importance of electrochemical production will further increase. What is already seen in the shift or transition from pyrometallurgical to electrochemical hydrometallurgical processes such as the produ
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