Electrochemistry articles within Nature Chemistry

Featured

  • News & Views |

    An electrochemical sensor that relies on displacement of a 'neutralizer' from a surface-bound, charged probe molecule by the analyte enables the use of a single platform for the detection of multiple analytes irrespective of their charge.

    • Anthony M. Burke
    •  & Alon A. Gorodetsky

  • Article |

    Lithium–air batteries have the possibility of having a very high energy density, but their use has been hampered by a limited number of charge–discharge cycles and a low current-rate capability. Now, exploiting a suitable, stable electrolyte allows an advanced lithium–air battery to operate with many cycles at various capacity and rate values.

    • Hun-Gi Jung
    • , Jusef Hassoun
    •  & Bruno Scrosati

  • Article |

    A universal detector of small molecules, proteins and nucleic acids is described that relies on the displacement of a neutralizer molecule from a sensor surface. When the neutralizer is displaced by an analyte, an electrochemical signal is generated. Ultrasensitive limits of detection are achieved, and a new record for the electrochemical detection of bacteria (0.15 colony-forming units per microlitre) is reported.

    • Jagotamoy Das
    • , Kristin B. Cederquist
    •  & Shana O. Kelley

  • Article |

    Copper and bipyridine (bpy) self-assemble in aqueous solutions at high pH into an active electrocatalyst for the oxidation of water to O2, one of the great challenges in energy catalysis. These solutions contain primarily (bpy)Cu(OH)2, and are robust and active catalysts, albeit at high overpotentials.

    • Shoshanna M. Barnett
    • , Karen I. Goldberg
    •  & James M. Mayer

  • Review Article |

    Redox sites can be incorporated within dendrimers — highly branched, well-defined macromolecules — at specific locations, such as their core, branching points, periphery or inner cavities. These dendrimers can serve to functionalize surfaces, and electron-transfer processes at their redox sites show promise for various applications ranging from metallo-protein modelling to sensing to catalysis.

    • Didier Astruc

  • Article |

    Adsorbed carbon monoxide typically acts to poison the oxidation of alcohols on heterogeneous catalysts and electrocatalysts. Here, it is shown that carbon monoxide that has been adsorbed irreversibly on a Au(111) surface can act as a promoter for this process by enhancing the scission of C–H bonds in the alcohol to yield the corresponding aldehyde.

    • Paramaconi Rodriguez
    • , Youngkook Kwon
    •  & Marc T. M. Koper

  • News & Views |

    Iridium complexes can show impressive homogeneous water-oxidation activity, but they can also act as precursors to heterogeneous catalysts. Understanding exactly what the catalytically active species is can be difficult, but now a technique has been applied that reveals the true nature of a catalyst, helping to remove this ambiguity.

    • Thomas J. Meyer

  • News & Views |

    Characterizing electrochemical behaviour on the nanometre scale is fundamental to gaining complete insight into the working mechanisms of fuel cells. The application of a new scanning probe microscopy technique can now relate local surface structure to electrochemical activity at a resolution below 10 nm.

    • Johannes A. A. W. Elemans

  • News & Views |

    The search for efficient oxygen reduction catalysts made from perovskite oxides rather than expensive precious metals is hindered by the sheer range of these oxides — where should the search begin? Developing design rules that can identify the best candidates is the first step towards a more targeted strategy.

    • Robert F. Savinell

  • Article |

    With the cost of noble metal oxygen-reduction catalysts rendering some fuel cells and batteries prohibitively expensive, the search for effective and cheaper catalysts is underway and would be speeded up by ‘design principles’. Now, the catalytic activity of oxide materials has been correlated to σ*-orbital occupation and the extent of metal–oxygen covalency.

    • Jin Suntivich
    • , Hubert A. Gasteiger
    •  & Yang Shao-Horn

  • News & Views |

    After two decades of research, the efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells seems to have reached a plateau. Now, changing both electrolyte and dye opens up new opportunities that offer the hope that the efficiency ceiling can be broken.

    • C. Michael Elliott

  • Article |

    Dye-sensitized solar cells combining electrolytes based on the ferrocene/ferrocenium redox couple with a metal-free organic donor–acceptor sensitizer are reported to achieve a record 7.5% energy conversion efficiency, revealing the great potential of ferrocene-based electrolytes for future dye-sensitized solar cell applications.

    • Torben Daeneke
    • , Tae-Hyuk Kwon
    •  & Leone Spiccia

  • Article |

    The potential for using molecules as wires in nanoscale electronics is somewhat tempered by the challenges in making long and uniform structures. Now, it has been shown that DNA — which is easily synthesized to precise lengths — can conduct charge over 34 nm on multiplexed gold electrodes, a distance that surpasses most reports of molecular wires.

    • Jason D. Slinker
    • , Natalie B. Muren
    •  & Jacqueline K. Barton

  • News & Views |

    Advances in transduction of electrochemical activity through surface plasmon resonance afford new opportunities for spatially and temporally resolved studies of interfaces.

    • Lane A. Baker
    •  & Chiao-Chen Chen

  • Article |

    Ceramic preparation of spinels — materials useful for a wide range of applications — requires complicated procedures and heat treatment over long periods. Now, it is shown that rapid synthesis of nanocrystalline Co–Mn–O spinels can be achieved under ambient conditions, and the resulting nanoparticles exhibit considerable catalytic activity towards the electrochemical oxygen reduction/evolution reactions.

    • Fangyi Cheng
    • , Jian Shen
    •  & Jun Chen

  • Research Highlights |

    A ruthenium complex has been shown to catalyse the oxidation of water in a non-aqueous solvent with a rate greater than in the aqueous system.

    • Gavin Armstrong

  • Article |

    The phosphoric acid fuel cell is limited by its slow rate of oxygen reduction at the cathode, but now an approach to the rational design of improved catalysts for this process has been developed. Molecular patterning of platinum surfaces with cyanide adsorbates is used to block the adsorption of spectator anions without hindering oxygen reduction, thus improving catalytic activity.

    • Dusan Strmcnik
    • , María Escudero-Escribano
    •  & Nenad M. Marković

  • Article |

    The assembly and evaluation of molecular structures on surfaces has been boosted by advances in single-molecule techniques. The development of such methods are continued here, showing that double-stranded DNA, bound to the tip of an atomic force microscope, can be deposited on the surface of a gold electrode using an electrical trigger.

    • Matthias Erdmann
    • , Ralf David
    •  & Hermann E. Gaub

  • Article |

    Glass is widely used as an electrical insulator in electrodes, but in spite of its high resistance, 100-nm-thick layers of glass have now been shown to be sufficiently conductive for electrochemical measurements. Obtaining redox couples through glass-covered nanoelectrodes suggests that the pH response of the glass is due to the formation of a hydrogel layer in acidic solution.

    • Jeyavel Velmurugan
    • , Dongping Zhan
    •  & Michael V. Mirkin

  • Article |

    The rational design of catalytic materials requires synthetic control over their reactive properties. Now, the activity of dealloyed Pt–Cu bimetallic nanoparticles, which catalyse the oxygen reduction reaction, can be tuned through control of the geometric strain at their surface.

    • Peter Strasser
    • , Shirlaine Koh
    •  & Anders Nilsson

  • Article |

    Although the triiodide/iodide redox couple works efficiently in dye-sensitized solar cells it restricts functionality by absorbing visible light. Now, a disulfide/thiolate redox couple that has negligible absorption in the visible spectral range is presented, which in conjunction with a sensitized heterojunction, displays an efficiency of 6.4% under standard illumination test conditions.

    • Mingkui Wang
    • , Nathalie Chamberland
    •  & Michael Grätzel

  • News & Views |

    Electrochemistry has so far been mostly centred around measuring factors and coefficients. Through the reversible reduction and oxidation of an electrode coating formed from three-dimensional hybrid aniline–gold nanoparticles, it has now moved on to controlling the pH of a solution, thus triggering specific reactions.

    • Reginald M. Penner

  • Article |

    Single-molecule magnets are clusters of metal ions linked together by organic bridges, with properties typically arising from exchange coupling of unpaired metal electrons. In mixed-valence systems, another magnetic mechanism involving itinerant electrons can also occur and induce a high-spin ground state. Now, such electron delocalization has been observed through an imidazolate bridge — a common linker in metal-organic architectures — which may enable the construction of higher spin clusters or three-dimensional magnets.

    • Bettina Bechlars
    • , Deanna M. D'Alessandro
    •  & Jeffrey R. Long

  • Article |

    Formic acid fuel cells require nanosized intermetallic nanoparticles as anode catalysts, but current techniques are poor at producing the small size required. Now, surface-modified ordered mesoporous carbons have been used to produce nanocrystallites as small as 1.5 nm that are extremely active catalysts.

    • Xiulei Ji
    • , Kyu Tae Lee
    •  & Linda F. Nazar

  • News & Views |

    Although it may seem counter-intuitive, the attraction between positively charged radical ions offers a new approach to driving controlled motion in molecular machines.

    • Harry L. Anderson

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Electrochemistry across other nature.com journals