Visions of the electrochemical future, past and present: Plus ca change?
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FEATURE ARTICLE
Visions of the electrochemical future, past and present: Plus ca change? Stanislav V. Sokolov 1 & Richard G. Compton 2 Received: 18 May 2020 / Revised: 18 May 2020 / Accepted: 22 May 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
We thank Editor Fritz Scholz for the invitation to identify ‘Future Tasks of Electrochemistry’, which we are pleased to attempt from both the perspectives of academia (RGC) and industry (SVS). Before undertaking this, we wondered if such an exercise had been previously attempted and, if so, with what success? Accordingly, we considered the relatively unknown edition of the collected works of Alexander N Frumkin published in 1987 by the publisher Nauka under the editorship of Academic B.P. Nikolsky [1]. The two volumes are now out of print and found in just a few libraries, for example, Moscow State University. To the best knowledge of the authors, they have not been translated into the English language or available online. Alexander Naumovich Frumkin (1895–1976), often thought of as the father of modern electrochemistry, was known for promoting electrochemistry and supervising future generations of scientists in addition to his major and transformative impact on the scientific development of the subject. He believed that electrochemistry would always play an important role in modern scientific developments and would cover multiple facets ranging from catalysis to the understanding of living cells. Frumkin’s thoughts on the future development of electrochemistry are best summarized in a plenary lecture he gave at the XI Mendeleev Meeting in 1975 at Alma-Ata Kazakhstan and which is summarized in the 1987 Nauka publication. It was Frumkin’s last plenary talk before his death in 1976 and was the culmination of multiple years of focused research. Since 1975, significant advances have been made yet a lot of the challenges highlighted remain as is briefly next discussed. * Richard G. Compton [email protected] 1
London, UK
2
Department of Chemistry, Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford University, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QZ, UK
The original title of the talk was ‘On several problems in electrochemistry’. During the talk, Frumkin made a remark that a better title would be ‘On the utility of electrochemistry’ as the subject underpins energy storage and catalysis as well as industrial processes such as electroplating. ANF noted that the application of electrochemistry requires a full understanding of thermodynamics and kinetics. Furthermore, and in contrast to other branches of chemistry, (dynamic) electrochemical processes can be studied at or close to equilibrium conditions giving the example of exchange currents. ANF asked, as we are again asked to question, what would the role of electrochemistry be in the future? He noted that a potential future of energy sources could be hydrogen based and that the understanding of electrolysis of water is required for large-scale hydrogen production. He imagined huge power stations splitting water and delivering hydrogen using
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