Overview
ABSTRACT
The coupling of electrochemistry with surface analysis techniques of the near-field microscopy has allowed for a significant increase in the means of studying and implementing interfacial electrochemical phenomena, at the micrometer, nanometer and even atomic scale. The scanning tunneling spectrometry (STM) and the atomic force spectrometry (AFM) are two probe-scanning techniques which have become involved in electrochemistry and therefore become essential. The characterizations thus made available are then physical and more specifically morphological, mechanical, electrical or physico-chemical (surface forces) according to the techniques and functioning mode used.
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Read the articleAUTHORS
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Alain PAILLERET: Senior lecturer at Pierre et Marie Curie University
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Sophie GRIVEAU: Senior Lecturer at the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie in Paris
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Fethi BEDIOUI: Research Director, CNRS
INTRODUCTION
In order to enrich and complete its capabilities for local electrochemical characterization of electrochemical reactivity, and to further enhance its role in the development of nanosciences, electrochemistry very quickly had to call upon, or even join forces with, high-performance surface analysis techniques enabling, if possible simultaneously, local in situ physico-chemical analysis, with optimum spatial resolution, of electrochemical interfaces of the conductor/solution type, and more generally solid/solution. It should be noted that these different requirements have often led to the exclusion of electron microscopies, sometimes because of their lack of resolution, and sometimes because they operate in a primary vacuum. It is against this backdrop that so-called "probe scanning" techniques have gradually become indispensable in the study of interfacial electrochemical processes, initially on the micrometric scale, then, in a second phase, on the nanometric or even atomic scale.
Considerable effort has gone into bringing electrochemistry into line with the two scanning probe techniques (SPM) that are only slightly older than SECM: scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The aim was to show how these two techniques have boosted electrochemistry's contribution to nanoscience tenfold, by providing the means to generate, modify and, above all, characterize nanostructured or nanofunctionalized electrochemical interfaces and electrogenerated nano-objects, not globally but very locally, with nanometric or even atomic resolution, depending on the working conditions and technique used. The characterizations thus made accessible are then physical, and more specifically, morphological, mechanical, electrical or even physico-chemical (surface forces) depending on the technique and its operating mode used.
This chapter provides a detailed introduction to AFM/electrochemistry and STM/electrochemistry couplings and their most advanced applications.
A table of abbreviations appears at the end of the article.
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Electrochemistry - near-field microscopy couplings
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AFM tips/electrochemical probe
Schäefer http://www.schaefer-tec.eu/
This company sells mixed probes (which can act simultaneously as force sensors and electrochemical probes) identical to those shown in figure 2c, and derived from the first manufacturing method described...
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