Electrochemistry: a grand old lady with a distinguished past and an exciting future
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FEATURE ARTICLE
Electrochemistry: a grand old lady with a distinguished past and an exciting future Michael E. G. Lyons 1 Received: 21 April 2020 / Revised: 21 April 2020 / Accepted: 23 April 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Electrochemistry or electrochemical science casts a distinctive allure, which, once initially indulged, often demands a lifetime commitment. What other subject offers the opportunity to understand and engage with such a wide range of disparate subjects ranging from analytical and physical chemistry, physics, materials science, engineering to biology? This breadth was, and indeed still is, very enticing to a curious mind. At the same time, electrochemistry has always been strongly rooted in technology. From its very onset with the voltaic pile, through early developments in alkaline fuel cells, to the latest developments with lithium ion batteries, the subject has underpinned device development which in turn has revolutionized technology and hence had a very significant impact on modern civilization for all of the last century and even more so for the twenty-first. The nexus between understanding the physical principles (at whatever level, phenomenological or molecular) underpinning the physical operation of the device and the engineering of the latter resulting in device optimization has defined the utility, and thus the importance, of electrochemistry from its onset. As an undergraduate student in the 1970s, the author first learnt as an undergraduate about the topic from the little book published by John Albery and by some more lengthy, but still very readable volumes by Bockris and Reddy. Bard and Faulkner came around just at the beginning of his PhD studies. There was very little else available at that time but for the classic treatise on electrochemical kinetics by Vetter. Electrochemistry was for expert electrochemists who took Laplace transforms and mathematical special functions in their stride, and was viewed as passé by many Chemists as being old fashioned due to its association with thermodynamics and classical ionics.
* Michael E. G. Lyons [email protected] 1
School of Chemistry and AMBER National Centre, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
The situation is so different today. Electrochemistry is no longer a minority sport but is used by a very diverse range of researchers in science and engineering. Some contend that electrochemistry has become an essential component of surface and materials science. Electrochemical science has found its niche in this century. The huge interest in energy materials and energy science has rendered a basic knowledge of electrochemical concepts very desirable. Indeed there are many general books available which will provide an entry at a number of levels (ranging from qualitative and quantitative) into electrochemical science for those who need it. Electrochemistry, especially the use of transient electrochemical methods such as potential sweep voltammetry, is now mainstream. Cyclic vol
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