CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

Electrochemical techniques are used for the production of aluminum and chlorine, the conversion of energy in batteries and fuel cells, sensors, electroplating, and the protection of metal structures against corrosion, to name just a few prominent applications. While applications such as fuel cells and electroplating may seem quite disparate, in this book we show that a few basic principles form the foundation for the design of all electrochemical processes.

The first practical electrochemical system was the Volta pile, invented by Alexander Volta in 1800. Volta's pile is still used today in batteries for a variety of industrial, medical, and military applications. Volta found that when he made a sandwich of a layer of zinc metal, paper soaked in salt water, and tarnished silver and then connected a wire from the zinc to the silver, he could obtain electricity (see Figure 1.1). What is happening when the wire is connected? Electrons have a chemical preference to be in the silver rather than the zinc, and this chemical preference is manifest as a voltage difference that drives the current. At each electrode, an electrochemical reaction is occurring: zinc reacts with hydroxide ions in solution to form free electrons, zinc oxide, and water, while silver oxide (tarnished silver) reacts with water and electrons to form silver and hydroxide ions. Hydroxide ions travel through the salt solution (the electrolyte) from the silver to the zinc, while electrons travel through the external wire from the zinc to the silver.

We see from this example that many phenomena interact in electrochemical systems. Driving forces for reaction are determined by the thermodynamic properties of the electrodes and electrolyte. The rate of the reaction at the interface in response to this driving force depends on kinetic rate parameters. Finally, mass must be transported through the electrolyte to bring reactants to the interface, and electrons must travel through the electrodes. The total resistance is therefore a combination of the effects of reaction kinetics and mass and electron transfer. Each of these phenomena-thermodynamics, kinetics, and transport-is addressed separately in subsequent chapters. This chapter defines basic terminology and gives an overview of the principal concepts that are derived in subsequent chapters.

Figure 1.1 Volta's first battery comprised of a sandwich of zinc with its oxide layer, salt solution, and silver with its oxide layer. While the original Volta pile used an electrolyte of NaCl in water, modern batteries use aqueous KOH to increase the conductivity and the concentration of OH-.

1.1 DEFINITIONS

Every electrochemical system must contain two electrodes separated by an electrolyte and connected via an external electronic conductor. Ions flow through the electrolyte from one electrode to the other, and the circuit is completed by electrons flowing through the external conductor.

An electrode is a material in which electrons are the mobile species and therefore can be used to sense (or control) the potential of electrons. It may be a metal or other electronic conductor such as carbon, an alloy or intermetallic compound, one of many transition-metal chalcogenides, or a semiconductor. In particular, in electrochemistry an electrode is considered to be an electronic conductor that carries out an electrochemical reaction or some similar interaction with an adjacent phase. Electronic conductivity generally decreases slightly with increasing temperature and is of the order 102 to 104?S/cm, where a siemens (S) is an inverse ohm.

An electrolyte is a material in which the mobile species are ions and free movement of electrons is blocked. Ionic conductors include molten salts, dissociated salts in solution, and some ionic solids. In an ionic conductor, neutral salts are found to be dissociated into their component ions. The term species refers to ions as well as neutral molecular components that do not dissociate. Ionic conductivity generally increases with increasing temperature and is of the order 10-4 to 10-1?S/cm, although it can be substantially lower.

In addition to these two classes of materials, some materials are mixed conductors, in which charge can be transported by both electrons and ions. Mixed conductors are occasionally used in electrodes, for example, in solid-oxide fuel cells.

Thus the key feature of an electrochemical cell is that it contains two electrodes that allow transport of electrons, separated by an electrolyte that allows movement of ions but blocks movement of electrons. To get from one electrode to the other, electrons must travel through an external conducting circuit, doing work or requiring work in the process.

The primary distinction between an electrochemical reaction and a chemical redox reaction is that, in an electrochemical reaction, reduction occurs at one electrode and oxidation occurs at the other, while in a chemical reaction, both reduction and oxidation occur in the same place. This distinction has several implications. In an electrochemical reaction, oxidation is spatially separated from reduction. Thus, the complete redox reaction is broken into two half-cells. The rate of these reactions can be controlled by externally applying a potential difference between the electrodes, for example, with an external power supply, a feature absent from the design of chemical reactors. Finally, electrochemical reactions are always heterogeneous; that is, they always occur at the interface between the electrolyte and an electrode (and possibly a third phase such as a gaseous or insulating reactant).

Even though the half-cell reactions occur at different electrodes, the rates of reaction are coupled by the principles of conservation of charge and electroneutrality. As we demonstrate in Section 3.1, a very large force is required to bring about a spatial separation of charge. Therefore, the flow of current is continuous: all of the current that leaves one electrode must enter the other. At the interface between the electrode and the electrolyte, the flow of current is still continuous, but the identity of the charge-carrying species changes from being an electron to being an ion. This change is brought about by a charge-transfer (i.e., electrochemical) reaction. In the electrolyte, electroneutrality requires that there be the same number of equivalents of cations as anions:

where the sum is over all species i in solution, and ci and zi are the concentration and the charge number of species i, respectively. For example, is +2, is -1, and is 0.

Faraday's law relates the rate of reaction to the current. It states that the rate of production of a species is proportional to the current, and the total mass produced is proportional to the amount of charge passed multiplied by the equivalent weight of the species:

where mi is the mass of species i produced by a reaction in which its stoichiometric coefficient is si and n electrons are transferred, Mi is the molar mass, F is Faraday's constant, equal to 96,487?C/mol, and the total amount of charge passed is equal to the current I multiplied by time t. The sign of the stoichiometric coefficient is determined by the convention of writing an electrochemical reaction in the form

where Mi is the symbol for the chemical formula of species i. For example, for the reaction

sZnO is -1, is 2, and n is 2.

Following historical convention, current is defined as the flow of positive charge. Thus, electrons move in the direction opposite to that of the convention for current flow. Current density is the flux of charge, that is, the rate of flow of positive charge per unit area perpendicular to the direction of flow. The behavior of electrochemical systems is determined more by the current density than by the total current, which is the product of the current density and the cross-sectional area. In this text, the symbol i refers to current density unless otherwise specified.

Owing to the historical development of the field of electrochemistry, several terms are in common use. Polarization refers to the departure of the potential from equilibrium conditions caused by the passage of current. Overpotential refers to the magnitude of this potential drop caused by resistance to the passage of current. Later, we discuss different types of resistances that cause overpotential.

1.2 THERMODYNAMICS AND POTENTIAL

If one places a piece of tarnished silver in a basin of salt water and connects the silver to a piece of zinc, the silver spontaneously will become shiny, and the zinc will dissolve. Why? An electrochemical reaction is occurring in which silver oxide is reduced to silver metal while zinc metal is oxidized. It is the thermodynamic properties of silver, silver oxide, zinc, and zinc oxide that determine that silver oxide is reduced spontaneously at the expense of zinc (as opposed to reducing zinc oxide at the expense of the silver). These thermodynamic properties are the electrochemical potentials. Let us arbitrarily call one half-cell the right electrode and the other the left electrode. The...