Nanoscale Electrochemistry

Book excerpt: Nanoscale Electrochemistry focuses on challenges and advances in electrochemical nanoscience at solid–liquid interfaces, highlighting the most prominent developments of the last decade. Nanotechnology has had a tremendous effect on the multidisciplinary field of electrochemistry, yielding new fundamental insights that have broadened our understanding of interfacial processes and stimulating new and diverse applications. The book begins with a tutorial chapter to introduce the principles of nanoscale electrochemical systems and emphasize their unique behavior compared with their macro/microscopic counterparts. Building on this, the following three chapters present analytical applications, such as sensing and electrochemical imaging, that are familiar to the traditional electrochemist but whose extension to the nanoscale is nontrivial and reveals new chemical information. The subsequent three chapters present exciting new electrochemical methodologies that are specific to the nanoscale, including "single entity"-based methods and surface-enhanced electrochemical spectroscopy. These techniques, now sufficiently mature for exposition, have paved the way for major developments in our understanding of solid–liquid interfaces and continue to push electrochemical analysis toward atomic-length scales. The final three chapters address the rich overlap between electrochemistry and nanomaterials science, highlighting notable applications in energy conversion and storage. This is an important reference for both academic and industrial researchers who are seeking to learn more about how nanoscale electrochemistry has developed in recent years. - Outlines the major applications of nanoscale electrochemistry in energy storage, spectroscopy and biology - Summarizes the major principles of nanoscale electrochemical systems, exploring how they differ from similar system types - Discusses the major challenges of electrochemical analysis at the nanoscale